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Ooops.

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Re: Ooops.

#241

Post by jrockway »

SwellJoe wrote: post #34
jrockway wrote: post #11

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.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic with the "who would?" portion of your comment, but doesn't cpan run tests, by default, whenever installing something? And, most people who aren't Perl developers with their own private Perl installation install CPAN modules as root, so they are available to all users. So, to answer the question seriously: Most people.

Uh, the cpan client runs "make install" as root, not "make test".

Re: Ooops.

#242

Post by joelhaasnoot »

Natsu wrote: post #223
chops wrote: post #163

I've done a similar thing a few years ago when I was first starting work on my guild hosting company's code. At the time, the main thing hosted on that machine was my WoW guild's website, which I had been working on for close to a year, and was beginning work on converting the site over to a general purpose guild hosting site. I was doing some work for a client, setting up a mirror of sorts for some kind of yearbook…

At work, we had a USB drive full of Ghost images. Someone else didn't know how to use Ghost that well and they managed to nuke the partition table by trying to write an image on the USB drive onto the drive itself... or something like that anyhow (newer versions don't let you do that any more, I note). Fortunately, they didn't destroy the data itself. I rebuilt the partition table and saved all of our backups.

That's like the time my supervisor was done setting up a server, and then was going to image it. He had two identical drives in the machine and imaged the empty to the full drive instead of vice-versa... I was the one to cleanup the mess, but learnt a lot.

Re: Ooops.

#243

Post by robin_reala »

derekp7 wrote: post #236
robin_reala wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not have backups or source control There’s an important motto to bear in mind here: data you haven’t backed up is data you don’t want . To be fair, this does bite us all at one point or another, but once it’s got you once you make damn sure it doesn’t get you twice. Also, these days I get shaky just doing FTP deploys. Give me capistrano and git, or even better a direct Heroku push any day of the week.

And, code listings that are not printed out are not backed up. Lets see you accidentally delete toner from paper.

Well, fire can. Which is why you need multiple off-site backups for important data.

Re: Ooops.

#244

Post by chops »

qusiba wrote: post #239
chops wrote: post #163

I've done a similar thing a few years ago when I was first starting work on my guild hosting company's code. At the time, the main thing hosted on that machine was my WoW guild's website, which I had been working on for close to a year, and was beginning work on converting the site over to a general purpose guild hosting site. I was doing some work for a client, setting up a mirror of sorts for some kind of yearbook…

There wasn't any version control software out there 6 year ago? Oh, I've been programming for 7 years, I remembered that I used VSS when I started working. But maybe I was using pirate version and you couldn't afford it.

There were plenty of RCSes out at the time, and I knew about them, but didn't use any of them. It was still a pet, personal project and I didn't consider it important. I had used VSS at my previous job and hated it, and I hadn't taken the time to learn any of the OSS VCSes at the time.

It was laziness, nothing more, and I got burnt playing with fire.

Re: Ooops.

#245

Post by rektide »

linux can still boot without a /usr. this was a commit; how many people ran it?

on the other hand, delete the boot.ini[1] and most windows systems cant even boot. now deploy that boot.ini deleting build on an MMO (eve online) and watch the fur fly. that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you earn a :golfclap:.

[1] http://google.com/search?q=ccp+boot.ini

Re: Ooops.

#246

Post by AretNCarlsen »

philwelch wrote: post #204
AretNCarlsen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Double-edged sword" has never worked for me, as a cliche. Do you often find yourself inadvertently smacking against the dull side of a single-edged sword, such that you stay away from double-edged swords for your own safety? rm is like a double- ended knife, i.e.: http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/4253/425... (Fun fact: many knife throwers grip the blade end anyway, rendering the cliche to an even…

I had a friend who actually knew proper sword technique, and he was not impressed by my machete with saw teeth on the other edge. With a single-edged sword you can use your forearm to support it when blocking, but with a double edged sword, not only can you not do that, but trying to block with the sword itself allows your opponent to overpower you and press your own sword against you.

I did not think of that angle, and am now appropriately recalcitrant.

Re: Ooops.

#247

Post by danso »

dfranke wrote: post #211
danso wrote: post #99

I hate languages with significant whitespace

The "significant whitespace" here is a space between command-line arguments. For that to qualify, you'd also have to include C as such a language. long jmp(); longjmp();

c'mon everyone, I was being facetious :)
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