Linux - GeneralThis Linux forum is for general Linux questions and discussion.
If it is Linux Related and doesn't seem to fit in any other forum then this is the place.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
On the aforementioned home server, trying to run 2 WinXP VMs at the same time with 3 GB of RAM. (Each VM is allocated 1GB RAM, but I apparently didn't think about any overhead.) One VM (the "experimental" one where I do stuff that might potentially infect something, like software i don't trust) was running just fine. Then I tried to start the other one (the "base" one that I just clone if I need an "experimental" one). And it's been about 10 minutes since then. The hard drive light has been solid on for that time, and I can't even SSh into it right now. Maybe when the second VM finishes booting it might calm down...
I'm sure it doesn't help that my swap and /home are on the same hard drive...
Distribution: Linux From Scratch, Slackware64, Partedmagic
Posts: 3,137
Rep:
I once encrypted a 1TB drive and thought I'd secured all my data - until I forgot the password and spent a week trying to recover the data, I gave up in the end, luckily most of the data was replacable.
I remember back around 1999 when I was new to linux. I was very ignorant.
I could not get X to work no matter what I did (limited knowledge). So, I hit up different places. I seen a signature, it read something like:
"When all else fails, rm -f / seems to always fix the problem"
So after beating the keyboard to death all night, I though all else is failing and tried it.
We all know how that went...
LOL... listen, I've done it to a contractor at work. This guy worked for Seimens, on a multi-bullion dollar project for my employer to modernize a century old relay based system (the joke is all this multi-billion dollar project is, is a computer based, GUI overlay on top of the old relay based system... so both systems need to always be functional).
The OS was Solaris 8 (and this was in 2011, the system just starting to be used, and was supposed to be a state of the art system!).
The one guy was upgrading the software, using a projector in a meeting room so I saw everything he was doing.
Me: "I heard it's really cool if do run 'rm -fr /' at the shell prompt. Ever do that?"
Contractor dude: "Oh yeah?" in a heavy German accent;
and proceed to type 'rm -fr' when I stopped him. I told him it was bad, but never told him why.
My supervisor told me I would have lost my job. Me, who working in a civil service, non-IT or any computer related field, and only making like $60 grand a year. Not the dude who's company is being paid billions and their staff obviously don't know basic UNIX.
I'm not sure if the 'I'm an idiot' moment would come from me even playing such a joke, or for me expecting the contractor's employee who's running commands as root to know what he's doing.
LOL...
I'm not sure if the 'I'm an idiot' moment would come from me even playing such a joke, or for me expecting the contractor's employee who's running commands as root to know what he's doing.
I was close to replying to LinBox2013's post about someone having that in their signature, to say that it is a horrific thing for someone to have in their signature.
They were upgrading the system and didn't know basic commands! Lovely. And Solaris 8 was End of Life like two years ago. But I've seen weirder things. I think we've all been in a similar position where we could've handled that better but if your job function was totally unrelated to their actions, you'd be on the short end of the stick were you to just note to management that the contractor wasn't the sharpest tack.
Those with knowledge, please never make system destructive jokes like that. You never know how far they'll go.
I tell users to 'man command' when in doubt and do not assume anything.
Here at LQ, we take this type of presentation serious. When possible, we will attempt to get the member to change their sig by presenting the obvious. If the member does not respond or refuses then we will remove the violation/problem from their sig. We do try to monitor things here at LQ but without our members reporting such issues it is nearly impossible.
Aside from some of my great embarrasing forum posts, responding to something that was clearly in my head... One of my winners long time ago was not knowing what the .directory file was in every folder. So I got the bright idea to do a rm */.directory on my backup. For some random reason I used an -r switch and instead of */.directory I did a rm -r * /.directory. That space + r switch wiped out my only backup of my stuff. It was all replaceable and I had been planning on deleting my ill gotten goods anyway, legalizing my collection of music and movies but it was a big annoyance.
For what it's worth I still don't know what the .directory file is for, don't care anymore though. It's invisible so I don't think about it, lest I wipe something out again. I now maintain 2 mirrors of my data partition so this can't happen again.
*EDIT* To clarify. This was done on my only backup at the time. And as I had just done a fresh install of a different distro I hadn't copied the backup into place on the laptop itself, so blasted my only source of my data partition. This event is what led me to creating a data specific partiton and linking the folders in it directly to my /home/$USER. I can re install at will (albeit no reason to anymore) and as long as I'm cautious when setting partitions to use and such my stuff is always on the ssd in my laptop.
For what it's worth I still don't know what the .directory file is for, don't care anymore though. It's invisible so I don't think about it, lest I wipe something out again. I now maintain 2 mirrors of my data partition so this can't happen again.
Are you asking about the "." directory, or some hidden directory on your system called ".directory"?
I don't think it's that, but don't know and do care at least for knowledge. Go ahead eggroll, because I think they were talking about the "." directory. What's the history of it and what's it for?
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
I'm guessing that the answer is in this thread (first one I saw that looked promising on Google): http://forums.opensuse.org/showthrea...irectory-files
I tend to think it's the file manager creating them to store meta information. I know I don't get them using Thunar on XFCE but I think I have seen them in the past under KDE.
I'm guessing that the answer is in this thread (first one I saw that looked promising on Google): http://forums.opensuse.org/showthrea...irectory-files
I tend to think it's the file manager creating them to store meta information. I know I don't get them using Thunar on XFCE but I think I have seen them in the past under KDE.
I believe as long as my Linux/Unix memory has been there have been "." and ".." directories. That could be me embellishing, I did use Unix as early as the 80's; however I'd say my true rememberance of seeing both "." and ".." has been probably seeing it in "ls -a" commands under Linux in the past 10 or so years. Meanwhile, I'm positive that the "." convention makes a file or directory hidden to normal ls commands and has always been the case back to at least the 80's memories that I have. I believe the explanation will point back towards System V. I would NOT remove "." and ".." just because I don't want to see them. Not saying you're saying that, but some answers in that thread implied that. I also don't think it has anything to do with VFAT, but that's just my guess.
Distribution: Debian Sid AMD64, Raspbian Wheezy, various VMs
Posts: 7,680
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by rtmistler
I believe as long as my Linux/Unix memory has been there have been "." and ".." directories. That could be me embellishing, I did use Unix as early as the 80's; however I'd say my true rememberance of seeing both "." and ".." has been probably seeing it in "ls -a" commands under Linux in the past 10 or so years. Meanwhile, I'm positive that the "." convention makes a file or directory hidden to normal ls commands and has always been the case back to at least the 80's memories that I have. I believe the explanation will point back towards System V. I would NOT remove "." and ".." just because I don't want to see them. Not saying you're saying that, but some answers in that thread implied that. I also don't think it has anything to do with VFAT, but that's just my guess.
To clarify I am not talking about the "special" directories referred to as "." and ".." -- they are a system convention to refer to a directory and its container, respectively. I am referring to directories (actually, thinking about it, they're probably files) called ".directory", the dot making them hidden, which can be found on some systems which, as far as I can tell, are created by a file manager for metadata.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.