3 ms·

The / key was right next to Enter on a lot of old keyboards. It was quite easy to type 'rm -rf /tmp/garbage*' and have a simple fumble turn it into 'rm -rf /'.

The / key was right next to Enter on a lot of old keyboards. It was quite easy to type 'rm -rf /tmp/garbage*' and have a simple fumble turn it into 'rm -rf /'. I mean, there's this guy I know, he did that once.

australis 12y ago
There's also the chance of it happening when writing a script Such as this classic: https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commi...
- jzwinck 12y ago
  Ten years prior to that, Apple had a similar bug in one of its installer scripts on OS X. I have a hard time finding much about it online now, because it happened at a time when OS X and the Internet were a lot less popular than today, but what I recall is that an unexpectedly customized installation directory (say with spaces or one level closer to "/" than the default) would cause the installer to delete a whole lot of things.
  - bentcorner 12y ago
    There's also this one from Pool of Radiance's 2001 release: http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2001/1416.html http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2001/1416.html Uninstall wipes out your Windows directory.
    - Paradigma11 12y ago
      I still have nightmares from this buggy mess. To add insult to injury the shop didn't want to take the game back afterwards.
  - iopq 12y ago
    I once installed GGClient in C:/Program Files/ instead of any particular folder so of course, I said "I'll just uninstall it from there and install it in the correct folder" and it proceeded to delete C:/Program Files/
thinkpad20 12y ago
The one that I did only a few months ago was something like $ cp -r path/to/some/directory path/to/very/important/directory $ (run some commands to verify copy did what I wanted) $ rm -r path/to/some/directory path/to/very/important/directory Of course, all I had meant to do was delete `path/to/some/directory`, but I just pressed 'up' in my history and switched `cp` to `rm`. Of course I hit Ctrl-C in an instant, but my FS was already hosed...

australis 12y ago

There's also the chance of it happening when writing a script Such as this classic: https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commit/a047be85247755cdbe0acce6f1dafc8beb84f2ac https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/commi...

jzwinck 12y ago
Ten years prior to that, Apple had a similar bug in one of its installer scripts on OS X. I have a hard time finding much about it online now, because it happened at a time when OS X and the Internet were a lot less popular than today, but what I recall is that an unexpectedly customized installation directory (say with spaces or one level closer to "/" than the default) would cause the installer to delete a whole lot of things.
- bentcorner 12y ago
  There's also this one from Pool of Radiance's 2001 release: http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2001/1416.html http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2001/1416.html Uninstall wipes out your Windows directory.
  - Paradigma11 12y ago
    I still have nightmares from this buggy mess. To add insult to injury the shop didn't want to take the game back afterwards.
- iopq 12y ago
  I once installed GGClient in C:/Program Files/ instead of any particular folder so of course, I said "I'll just uninstall it from there and install it in the correct folder" and it proceeded to delete C:/Program Files/

thinkpad20 12y ago

The one that I did only a few months ago was something like $ cp -r path/to/some/directory path/to/very/important/directory $ (run some commands to verify copy did what I wanted) $ rm -r path/to/some/directory path/to/very/important/directory Of course, all I had meant to do was delete `path/to/some/directory`, but I just pressed 'up' in my history and switched `cp` to `rm`. Of course I hit Ctrl-C in an instant, but my FS was already hosed...