I accidentally untarred archive intended to be extracted in root directory, which among others included some files for /etc directory.
I went on to rm -rv ~/etc, but I quickly typed rm -rv /etc instead, and hit enter, while using a root account.

  • underscores@lemmy.zipEnglish
    542·
    3 days ago

    I agree with this take, don’t wanna blame the victim but there’s a lesson to be learned.

    • neatchee@piefed.socialEnglish
      641·
      3 days ago

      except if you read the accompanying text they already stated the issue by accidentally unpacking an archive to their user directory that was intended for the root directory. that’s how they got an etc dir in their user directory in the first place

      • ThanksForAllTheFish@sh.itjust.works
        24·
        3 days ago

        Could make one archive intended to be unpacked from /etc/ and one archive that’s intended to be unpacked from /home/Alice/ , that way they wouldn’t need to be root for the user bit, and there would never be an etc directory to delete. And if they run tar test (t) and pwd first, they could check the intended actions were correct before running the full tar. Some tools can be dangerous, so the user should be aware, and have safety measures.

        • neatchee@piefed.socialEnglish
          10·
          3 days ago

          they acquired a tar package from somewhere else. the instructions said to extract it to the root directory (because of its file structure). they accidentally extracted it to their home dir

          that is how this happened. not anything like what you were saying

          • ThanksForAllTheFish@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            18 hours ago

            I understand that they were intending to unpack from / and they unpacked from /home/ instead. I’m just arguing that the unpack was already a potentially dangerous action, especially if it had the potential to overwrite any system file on the drive. It’s in the category of “don’t run stuff unless you are certain of what it will do”. For this reason it would make sense to have some way of checking it was correct before running it. Any rms to clean up files will need similar steps before running as well. Yes this is slower, but would argue deleting /etc by mistake and fixing it is slower still.

            I’m suggesting 3 things:

            • Confirm the contents of the tar
            • Confirm where you want to extract the contents
            • Have backups in case this goes wrong somehow

            Check the contents:

            • use "tar t’’ to print the contents before extracting, this lists all the files in the tar without extracting the contents. Read the output and check you are happy with it

            Confirm where:

            • run pwd first, or specify “-C ‘/output-place/’” during extraction, to prevent output to the wrong folder

            Have backups:

            • Assume this potentially dangerous process of extracting to /etc (you know this because you checked) may break some critical files there, so make sure this directory is properly backed up first, and check these backups are current.

            I’m not suggesting that everyone knows they should do this. But I’m saying that problems are only avoidable by being extra careful. And with experience people build a knowledge of what may be dangerous and how to prevent that danger. If pwd is /, be extra careful, typos here may have greater consequences. Always type the full path, always use tab completion and use “trash-cli” instead of rm would be ways to make rm safer.

            If you’re going to be overwriting system files as root, or deleting files without checking, I would argue that’s where the error happened. If they want to do this casually without checking first, they have to accept it may cause problems or loss of data.