[NCLUG] Why not Root?

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 02:03:13PM -0600, John L. Bass wrote:
>over your home directory or shared project directories disappearing
>because of being in the wrong directory while executing "rm -rf *".

Just the simple "change of context" of deciding to switch to root can be
very helpful.  It reminds me of an old text game I played where this one
time I did a "save" and my companion bot said "Are we going to do something
dangerous now?"  Intentionally switching to this context can be useful.
When I'm in "root mode" on production boxes I tend to be much more careful.
I'll re-read command-lines before pressing enter, I'll entirely avoid doing
things like "rm -rf *" (instead doing at least the full path, for example
"rm -rf /home/justdeleteduser" or "rm -rf /var/svn/hosedproject/*".  If
nothing else, the full path prevents accidental replay issues, like
re-running it through history when you've changed directories.

To bring this back to the original poster, it's like the policy of not
distracting someone when they're running a power-tool.  Sure, you may be
able to do that for decades without problems, but it increases the
likelihood of problems...

Sean
-- 
 Canadian phone sex: What kind of hockey jersey are you wearing?
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability
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