Paul & David, So very true. I learned that the hard way when we had a bug in a configuration one-liner that renamed /etc to /somethingelse across 20 different kinds of unix (I was working for a software development house and we shipped on all of them). Took over a day to break into each one and rename it back. Hardest was Dec Tru64 which required pressing a special key combination at just the right time in the boot sequence.
ski On Mon, 19 May 2014 06:41:19 -0700 Paul Graydon <p...@paulgraydon.co.uk> wrote: > At a previous job we managed to push out passwd file to several > hundred servers without a root account in it. (we'd forgotten to make > root a protected account that could never expire in the generating > script we used with cfengine) That was fun. All sorts of stuff broke > in some very interesting ways. That lead to a fun day of running > around servers with recovery disks and replacing the passwd and > shadow files. > > David Lang <da...@lang.hm> wrote: > > >to err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer > > > >...and when you automate changes to computers.... > > > >I've done similar things, not reformatting everything, but I managed > >to use an automation tool to break all 250 firewalls in at > >$prior_job in a way that disabled the automation at the same time, > >requiring booting from recovery media and manual changes to each box > >to recover. To complicate things, the firewalls mostly continued to > >work, so we had to juggle the fixes to avoid breaking things even > >worse. > > > >The good news was that the automation was good enough that I was > >able to give a couple people instructions on how to recover and we > >got everything fixed in a few hours, but it was an interesting > >afternoon. > > > >David Lang > > > >On Sun, 18 May 2014, Nick Webb wrote: > > > >> On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 9:38 PM, David Lang <da...@lang.hm> wrote: > >> > >>> wayback to the rescue > >>> > >>> http://web.archive.org/web/20140516225155/http://it. > >>> emory.edu/windows7-incident/ > >>> > >>> > >> I hang my head in shame for not checking there! > >> > >> Wow this is/was a nightmare. For those of us working on automation > >> initiatives, this is one downside to be careful of... when it's so > >> easy to make a mass change we must take extra care... > >> > >_______________________________________________ > >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/ > _______________________________________________ > 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/ -- "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it connected to the entire universe" John Muir Chris "Ski" Kacoroski, kacoro...@gmail.com, 206-501-9803 or ski98033 on most IM services _______________________________________________ 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/
