Check out this near miss

[David Bandel]

On 5/10/07, Man-wai Chang <mwchang at i-cable.com> wrote:
> James McDonald wrote:
> > I was trying to delete old files in the PDF dir but I missed the dot.
> >
> > Thank goodness I wasn't logged in as root.
> >
> > jm at mail:~/PDF$ rm -rf /*
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/bash': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/rbash': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/sh': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/cat': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/chgrp': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/chmod': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/chown': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/cp': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/date': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/dd': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/df': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/dir': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/echo': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/false': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/ln': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/ls': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/mkdir': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/mknod': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/mv': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/pwd': Permission denied
> > rm: cannot remove `/bin/readlink': Permission denied
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> >
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> >
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>
> ALWAYS alias rm=`rm -i` in /etc/bashrc or /etc/profile.

What horrid advice.  Baby Sysadmins that grow up _expecting_ this
alias to always be there are the ones who destroy entire file systems
when it's not.

NEVER depend on aliases like the above.  They're the first things I
unalias on a RedCrap system.

>
> :)

:(


Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto