[vox] Stupid User Tricks

[Richard Crawford]

It's the one thing that's always listed in just about every "Beginner's
Guide to Unix" book in the section on the Root account:  "BE VERY CAREFUL
WHEN IN ROOT!  Imagine what would happen if you were the root user and
just happened to type 'rm -rf *' from the / directory."

Well, hell.  Guess what I did today?

In my own defense, I didn't actually know I was in /.  I apparently
followed a strange symbolic link that the previous employee at this desk
had set up, and thinking I was in the /usr/files/blah directory, I started
deleting.  As soon as I saw what I was doing, I clicked ^C immediately,
but the damage was done.  I can no longer telnet into the computer or do
anything to it.  And I happened to be logged in as root because I'd been
messing with Apache config files just prior to this and hadn't gotten
around to switching back.

Oy.  I wonder if I'll have this job tomorrow?


-- 
Slainte,
Richard S. Crawford
AIM: Buffalo2K / Y!: rscrawford / ICQ: 11640404
http://www.mossroot.com http://www.stonegoose.com
"It is only with our heart that we can see clearly.  What is essential is
invisible to the eye."  --Antoine de Saint Exupery