Posted on 04/14/2016 11:38:37 AM PDT by Red Badger
Thanks to just one mistake, he instructed the computer to delete everything it could find.
The next time you accidentally close a file without saving, just keep in mind that it could be worse. You could be Marco Marsala, a hosting provider who accidentally and irrevocably deleted his entire business with a faulty line of code.
As Marsala wrote on Server Fault, a forum where he was asking for help with the bind he'd gotten himself into, "I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers ...All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too."
A dire situation for certain, but one that Marsala was apparently hopeful he could rectify. "How I can recover from a rm -rf / now in a timely manner?" his plea for assistance ends.
That "rm -rf/" is the troublesome line that got Marsala into trouble. It is, essentially, a command that will forcibly delete data without asking for confirmation. As The Independent explains:
The "rm" tells the computer to remove; the r deletes everything within a given directory; and the f stands for "force", telling the computer to ignore the usual warnings that come when deleting files.
... [Because] of an error in the way it was written, the code didn't actually specify anywhere – and so removed everything on the computer.
Why was Marsala running this command at all? It was actually part of his backup procedure, presumably intended to delete old backups. But due to the lack of specificity, it just deleted everything it could get its hands on—including customer websites. Because Marsala didn't have a backup somewhere that was completely isolated from what this particular command could touch, it all went away. It's probably gone forever, according to the experts on Server Fault.
The lessons to be learned here? A few: Always double check instructions to delete anything. Make sure you back up your important data offline. And last but not least, a computer will always do exactly what you tell it to do. If it doesn't do what you wanted, you are the one who messed up.
I think an air-gap back up would have helped here.
Remember: Jesus saves.
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy - Joseph Campbell
President Clinton’s new technology Czar.
(Really though. There are utilities that can recover deleted information. I doubt he wipes, not with a cloth, his hard drives.
What is that?..................
That’s a good one.
Try cleaning up a user’s machine with an awful virus, and then getting cursed at by management because you tried to help. After they tried to infect another machine or two with that one.
Oy
Thanks to both of you for your most helpful,and easily understood,replies.
.
Actually the "r" stands for "recursive", meaning it also deletes everything in all sub-directories.
Whenever I used a command such as that I would stare at it for many minutes before hitting enter... making absolute certain that I'm in the right starting place and I typed everything correctly.
Of course there are always your backups if you screw up, but restoring stuff is a pain so why go there.
Flash drives are not reliable enough to be used as backup unless you have multiple redundancies. Perhaps SSD drives are an exception, put those little thumb drives you get at walmart are like printing important documents on toilet paper. I use rotating mechanical disk drives connected by USB.
Old lady here, too; and I consider all my craft patterns, recipes, etc., to be ‘important data’.
We use an external hard drive. You just have to keep backing it up on a regular schedule. (Many kinds, many prices on Amazon.)
-JT
Old lady here, too; and I consider all my craft patterns, recipes, etc., to be ‘important data’.
We use an external hard drive. You just have to keep backing it up on a regular schedule. (Many kinds, many prices on Amazon.)
-JT
It took 14 posts to achieve that observation.
That is sort of the definition of a Very Bad Day.
Don’t be ‘That Guy’, hire a professional you can sue.
I wish it would. My wife is standing in a very long line at the local IRS office waiting to speak to a rep about another person filing a tax return in her name. Something that could likely be handled over the phone, yet they made her go stand in a line that is so long that she probably won’t even get in the door today.
My gosh, I hate the IRS.
That was my thought as well. If it's just a delete, most if it should be recoverable, for the right price.
Moron
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