>> Write the command exactly as you would with the rm, but use ls instead. >> Verify >> that what you see is what you want to be delete. Use your command line >> history >> (set -o vi, set -o emacs etc...), recall that command and substitute ls with >> rm. Even if you delete with a find command, do it first with ls, output to a >> file, verify. > One sysadmin I worked with told me that whenever I was going to delete a > line in MySQL I should first type 'limit 1' and a bunch of garbage > followed by a semi-colon: > > limit 1 asdklvf; > > Then prepend to that the delete I intended to do, just in case I > accidentally hit enter at the wrong time. > > Struck me as a little bit of overkill! >
When I'm writing a more complex rm or sql delete, I'll often put some junk at the beginning of the command. I've accidentally hit return early too many times to count. I also do the ls before rm and select before delete tests too. The worst I've done is 1) Backup AS400 ERP data after hours 2) Did a bunch of work that didn't work out 3) Restored and went home The problem was I restored the wrong date from the backup. Could have been easily fixable when people noticed the next morning, but I left the good tape in the drive and the midnight backup overwrote it. Lost 24 hours of everything. I'm pretty paranoid about verifying backups and restores theses days :-) _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
