264
What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 7 months ago by danielquinn@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.ml
274 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm working on a some materials for a class wherein I'll be teaching some young, wide-eyed Windows nerds about Linux and we're including a section we're calling "foot guns". Basically it's ways you might shoot yourself in the foot while meddling with your newfound Linux powers.

I've got the usual forgetting the . in lines like this:

$ rm -rf ./bin

As well as a bunch of other fun stories like that one time I mounted my Linux home folder into my Windows machine, forgot I did that, then deleted a parent folder.

You know, the war stories.

Tell me yours. I wanna share your mistakes so that they can learn from them.

Fun (?) side note: somehow, my entire ${HOME}/projects folder has been deleted like... just now, and I have no idea how it happened. I may have a terrible new story to add if I figure it out.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 24 points 7 months ago

Everyone here is talking about rm, but when’s the last time you dd’ed the wrong thing by accident?

You can get tripped up by tab completion, hda vs sda, sda vs sdb, flipping the articles around, he’ll, I’ve even blasted a good drive with /dev/random because I did t pay attention to what computer I’m logged into.

My killer app for multiple terminals open at once, weather through several ttys, xterms, tmux or the other one I don’t use was to type out my dd commands with a ls or something safe making in front of it while I look back and forth compulsively to verify that all the targets are correct.

[-] ____@infosec.pub 12 points 7 months ago

Only reason dd hasn’t bitten me is that in my head, if and of make perfect sense as input and output.

Doesn’t mean I won’t make that error tomorrow, ofc. But I tend not to alias except harmless stuff to avoid that very problem.

[-] Bhaelfur@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago

Yup, I did that last year. I wrote a Linux ISO to my hard drive instead of a flash drive. It was interesting watching my desktop slowly fail. Thankfully I was preparing a switch to a different distro, so I had backed up what I needed.

[-] No1@aussie.zone 9 points 7 months ago

All my drives are nvme* now.

I feel so much safer punching in of=/dev/sdaX

[-] potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.ml 3 points 7 months ago

I haven't but I'm always terrified of doing it

this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
264 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

48411 readers
734 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz