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Fallout · Feb 2, 2003, 12:26 AM

BACK UP YOUR STUFF!!!

I was dicking around with rm -rf in single user mode, erased some important Unix directories that I thought weren't necessary, and not surprisingly, OS X wouldn't start up. Unfazed, I started up in OS 9 with the intent of copying my Home directory to the other partition. Lo and behold, after I log in, up pops a friendly dialog box telling me that my Mac OS X volume appeared to be damaged, and it wouldn't show up on the desktop. I proceed to open Disk First Aid, select the volume, and click Repair. At this it failed, and due to my lack of a good hard disk utility, it seemed I was out of options.

But then I realized that I still had a tiny sliver of hope. With a growing tingle of excitement, I inserted my Jaguar install CD and started up from it. After clicking OK several times, the disk selection screen appeared, with a bright red X on my OS X partition. The tiny sliver of hope fell to the floor and shattered.

Fast forward two hours. I sit here waiting for my month-old backups to finish copying and typing this. I lost about a gig of MP3's along with 10 gigs of other stuff. Don't let this happen to you. BACK YOUR **** UP NOW!!!!

ambush · Feb 2, 2003, 12:31 AM

Conclusion: don't mess with the command line when you don't know what you're doing.

I Bent My Wookiee · Feb 2, 2003, 12:55 AM

Originally posted by ambush:
Conclusion: don't mess with the command line when you don't know what you're doing.

Exactly.

Sucka

sniffer · Feb 2, 2003, 01:05 AM

But Fallout have a point OTOH.

Fallout · Feb 2, 2003, 01:27 AM

Originally posted by ambush:
Conclusion: don't mess with the command line when you don't know what you're doing.

I know it

but The **** I erased all had (Mac OS 9) in the filename, even though OS 9 is on a separate partition, so I figured it was useless..

sniffer: What does "OTOH" mean?

sniffer · Feb 2, 2003, 01:49 AM

Originally posted by Fallout:
I know it but The **** I erased all had (Mac OS 9) in the filename, even though OS 9 is on a separate partition, so I figured it was useless..

sniffer: What does "OTOH" mean?

on the other hand..

int69h · Feb 2, 2003, 02:36 AM

I am reminded of my own first bad encounter with rm -rf many years ago. I assumed that I was in /tmp and issued rm -rf * intending to do a little cleanup. Imagine my surprise when the cleanup took far longer than I thought it should.

Never issue rm -rf * while in /

To make matters worse, I had my Windows partitions mounted as well. As a reward for my efforts, I had the pleasure of reloading Slackware 1 floppy disk at a time.

I think that's the only time a computer has caused me to become physically ill.

Jerommeke · Feb 2, 2003, 03:11 AM

Originally posted by ambush:
Conclusion: don't mess with the command line when you don't know what you're doing.

I couldn't have said better. It's your own fault, and no back-up wouldn't have bene necessary if you hadn't screwed it all yourself.

leffo · Feb 2, 2003, 12:35 PM

When I was running Linux a couple of years ago I remember creating a script to stop me from doing destructive things to my system as described above. It looked something like this (recreated from memory..):

---
#!/bin/sh

echo "You're standing in $PWD"
echo "Think twice now! ENTER to continue, CTRL-C to abort"
read

rm $1 $2 $3 $4
---

I named this script safe_rm.sh and put it in /root/bin. Then I created an alias rm="/root/bin/saferm.sh" which was defined when logged in as root. I can't remember if it actually saved me once, but atleast I learnt to think twice when playing around with rm in the system.

ratlater · Feb 2, 2003, 12:40 PM

Originally posted by Jerommeke:
I couldn't have said better. It's your own fault, and no back-up wouldn't have bene necessary if you hadn't screwed it all yourself.

Wow, the people around here are getting spiteful lately. Give the guy a break. He screwed up and is just giving good advice to everyone. He's not asking for sympathy or bitching about the problems.

-matt

Footy · Feb 2, 2003, 12:51 PM

True, so true. Fallout is just venting his mistake. Give the guy a break. No since belittling him.

Originally posted by ratlater:
Wow, the people around here are getting spiteful lately. Give the guy a break. He screwed up and is just giving good advice to everyone. He's not asking for sympathy or bitching about the problems.

-matt

rlmorel · Feb 2, 2003, 01:42 PM

Folks, I suggest to everyone buying a mac, that they buy a FW HD to mirror, and use CCCloner to back up completely to the FWHD every so often. It is the best money spent for peace of mind. Whether or not you know what your are doing in command line, it is a good idea to back up.

ReggieX · Feb 2, 2003, 01:47 PM

Just a friendly reminder: make your subject lines less vague.

I had a HD break down 2 summers ago, and managed to get most of it back. I'm much more regular with my backups these days.