>Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 12:19:30 +0200
>From: "Geoff Galitz" <ge...@galitz.org>
>Subject: [CentOS] OT:  SysAdmin Stories
>
>I'm compiling a collection of stories from the systems administrator
>trenches. ....
>
>Thanks!
>
>-Geoff
>
>---------------------------------
>Geoff Galitz
>Blankenheim NRW, Germany
>http://eifel-consulting.biz
>http://www.galitz.org/
>http://german-way.com/blog/

The internet never forgets - it just loses the thread... This request is 
similar to one a number of years ago, and the result seemed at the time to be 
worth keeping. Now with the power of google, you might like to search for "The 
Unofficial Unix Administration Horror Story" thread. The original requests pop 
up under:-

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.admin/search?group=comp.unix.admin&q=%22horror+stories%22
 

My personal favourite is the one re-posted then by Mark Brader concerning a 
recovery from "cd ; rm -rf *" as root (and long before the days of root having 
/root as a home directory). Another anecdote which shows the dangers of 
creeping featureism runs something like:-

  Script started on Mon 07 Jun 2010 09:31:20 AM BST

  # rm -i -r *
  rm: cannot remove `-i': No such file or directory
  # 

  Script done on Mon 07 Jun 2010 09:31:40 AM BST

This is waiting to bite the admin today who aliases rm to "rm -i" and feels 
safe from their own finger trouble until they start to rely on this and reach 
an environment where the alias has not been set.

Chris Ritson (Computing Officer and School Safety Officer)

Room 707, Claremont Tower,        EMAIL: c.r.rit...@ncl.ac.uk
School of Computing Science,      PHONE: +44 191 222 8175
Newcastle University,             FAX  : +44 191 222 8232
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU.  WEB  : http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/


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