sometimes i suspect that i'm not as funny as i think i am

[rone]

Nix wrote:

One person at work keeps a file named -i in important directories on Solaris boxes, just to catch rm *'s in them.

Do they keep an extra pair of underpants in their car in case they shit themselves on the way to work?

Comments

[omnot.livejournal.com]

And sometimes you are right.

Don't worry. You are not nearly alone.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

I know several programmers who probably should... *bangs head on desk, head*

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

Pity it wouldn't catch the vast majority of accidental occurences of erroneous 'rm's.

rm -rf foo/* expanding to
rm -rf foo/-i foo/... does not do anything other than remove the crap you were trying to save.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed -- I was referring to the underpants, though! When it comes to things like files named '-i', I lean more towards learning-by-painful-experience than safety-nets-of-dubious-effectiveness.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

...for what it's worth, I keep a pair of "emergency pants" in the trunk of the car. They came in handy the day I showed up before one of my classes with a huge rip in my pants.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

http://www.sluggy.com/images/comics/020417a.gif

did I mention I hate you?

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, maybe i left that in my emergency underpants.

OH NO! The underpants gnomes have attacked!

[covertmusic.livejournal.com]

My catastrophic sysadmin accidents tend to involve dd, not rm.

I'm an Excel/Keynote/CRM jockey now anyway. I'm sitting here, typing on a Mac, wearing a suit. I've gone full pointyhair.

I had a soul, once.

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

$
$ sudo rm -rf covertmusic

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

It's funny...

But of course in reality, it's a good idea. Because while only one person can be wearing your underpants at a time, quite a few people can be root on a *nix box at the same time...

Or in other words, "Yes I do keep spare underwear around if I'm being forced to work in shitty conditions".

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

If you have people with root access who are prone to carelessly typing 'rm *', you have problems.

hire professionals

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

remember that the whole 'one shot one kill' is not always a good contract constant, and should be negotiable in the case where you are willing to pay the ammo bill so that the removal of defectives with root access is paced appropriately.

[vatine]

I know one guy who kept files named -rf around, specifically so that he would NOT use wildcards. Learning through pain!