On 21 March 2011 23:46, Joe Zeff <joe(a)zeff.us> wrote:
On 03/21/2011 04:23 PM, suvayu ali wrote:
> Whereas in
> a proper root shell aren't you prone to "grave mistakes" due to silly
> things like typos, "forgot where I am in the directory tree" like
> errors?
First, I only use su - if and *only* if I have to, to avoid those
embarrassing "where was I?" moments. (I also use pwd if I'm not
completely sure.) Second, before I do anything as root, I read over the
command several times to be sure. And, before deleting *anything* as
root, I use ls to see exactly what I'm going to delete and I never
delete anything *as root* without good reason.
I routinely su immediately after logging into a server, because very
little of what I do (I work Tech Support for a hosting company) can be
done without root access. However I am also very very careful. I never
delete anything, because I simply move it out of the way instead. I
will always create a backup before changing a file and I never do
*anything* without a backout plan. To take an example, today I moved
86000 messages in a Maildir into separate subfolders by date. That
took me about 5 minutes, but I spent 15 minutes beforehand creating
the tarball of the entire maildir as a backup before I made any
changes.
In summary, root access isn't the problem - it makes no difference if
I make that mistake on the rare occasion I do su or if I su routinely
and make the mistake once - it's the mistake that is the problem and
hence being careful and having backups is the best defence.
IOW, I'm very careful.
I won't say that I can't make mistakes, but I can say that after using
Linux as a secondary OS starting in about '98 and as my only OS since
Fedora 9 I've learned how to avoid almost all of them. I tend to regard
such things as simple, common prudence and expect the same from most of
the people on this list.
I agree with you. I see so many incidents where my Customers have done
an "rm -f . /" instead of "rm -rf ./" - simple checking your typing
before hitting that mysterious enter key saves you from making the
rookie mistakes. I have the experience to avoid them now, because this
is what I do day in, day out, but I sympathise with people who make
these errors simply because they lack my experience.
I found myself, more and more,
finding things obvious that nobody else understood or knew, simply
because none of the other techs had anywhere near my experience.
Considering how long I've been using Linux, this may well be simply
another case of my not realizing how different my experience level is
compared to the rest of the list.
This is the same in any field. You need to routinely document your
knowledge, so that in the inevitable "man under a car" incident (this
actually happened to a co-worker), the knowledge survives. I've
started documenting (after the fact) any helpful tips I pass on to a
co-worker, simply because next time someone asks, I can point to that
central resource instead of writing a full response. In time.
searching that knowledgebase becomes first-nature for the newbies and
I get less questions - so it has a selfish side ;o)
--
Sam