Ooops. • Hacker News Board

Re: Ooops.

#11

Post by jrockway » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

I don't remember the exact details, but a few years ago there was a Perl module that did something like:

   my $path = something_that_can_return_undef_on_failure;
   `rm -rf /$path`;

during the execution of its test suite. The author didn't catch it in testing because he never ran "make test" as root (who would?). But people on the Internet ran "make test" as root, with disastrous consequences.

Re: Ooops.

#12

Post by nickolai » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

reminds me of

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Bourne-Into-Oblivion.aspx

Re: Ooops.

#13

Post by jedbrown » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:48 PM UTC

yesimahuman wrote: post #6

This terrifies me now of every single install script that refuses to run if not root.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/fakeroot

Re: Ooops.

#14

Post by orenmazor » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

just tried to explain this to a few of my windows using coworkers.

Re: Ooops.

#15

Post by phaedrus » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

rm is like a knife where the handle has a sharp edge too...

Re: Ooops.

#16

Post by Wickk » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

nickolai wrote: post #12

reminds me of http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Bourne-Into-Oblivion.aspx

That never gets old

Re: Ooops.

#17

Post by mikemaccana » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:57 PM UTC

troutwine wrote: post #7

jefffoster wrote: post #5

I use the safe-rm ( http://freshmeat.net/projects/safe-rm ) package to help me avoid doing this kind of thing.

Do you not find that a lack of wide installation limits its usefulness?

You can use GNU remove, which lets you put arguments last for safety, on any Linux box:

Eg:

rm /whatever -rf

Ie, if you hit enter too early, you still haven't forced.

I've been using Linux for 14 years and have never accidentally rm'd recursively. I'm not sure when they added it, but I've been using it for a very long time.

Re: Ooops.

#18

Post by JonnieCache » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

While we're on the subject, has anyone successfully found/created a replacement for rm on OS X that moves files to the trash, but doesn't break the interface of rm for use in scripts?

Re: Ooops.

#19

Post by stephen_g » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 3:03 PM UTC

orenmazor wrote: post #14

just tried to explain this to a few of my windows using coworkers.

Just tell them it's the same as a Windows installer accidentally removing the entire Program Files directory.

Re: Ooops.

#20

Post by hvs » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 3:05 PM UTC

orenmazor wrote: post #14

just tried to explain this to a few of my windows using coworkers.

"Tried?" Certainly it wasn't that hard to explain.