Re: rm -R /usr/
"Jacob I. Stowell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. I guess it is > a bad idea to issue the following command: > > rm -R /usr/ Maybe that isn't that bad, or is it? Still have /etc and /var remaining. Is it possible to get dpkg from any other computer, and re-install all packets which were installed before? Anyway, it may be hard way, harder than re-install everything... -- M. Tavasti / [EMAIL PROTECTED] / +358-40-5078254 Poista sähköpostiosoitteesta molemmat x-kirjaimet Remove x-letters from my e-mail address
Re: rm -R /usr/
I've made countless mistakes being overly cavalier with "rm". As others have mentioned, "rm -i" didn't work for me because I just got in the habit of always using "-f". About a year ago, I decided to start fiddling with a "trash can" script. I ended up with several shell scripts that alias rm to move all deleted files and directories to a temporary directory until logout. I can then "undelete" anything that I realize I still need later on. If anyone has some time to waste and is interested in taking a look at what I came up with, I put the scripts and a brief explanation here: http://www.albany.edu/~bs7452/trash.html I realize there are countless better ways to make a system such as this. I even hesitate to put my scripts out there because they are so embarrassingly amateur. Oh well. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. -- Brian J. Stults Doctoral Candidate Department of Sociology University at Albany - SUNY Phone: (518) 442-4652 Fax: (518) 442-4936 Web: http://www.albany.edu/~bs7452
Re: rm -R /usr/
On Sat, Jun 10, 2000 at 08:31:56PM -0400, Jacob I. Stowell wrote: > hello > > i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. I guess it is > a bad idea to issue the following command: > > rm -R /usr/ Reminds me of the time I did an "rm -rf * /" as root. Here's what happened: - I blew away my root partition. - I blew away the mounted disk I was trying to clear. I was doing some partition shuffling, so I'd mounted the rest of my partitions read-only. I was trying to restore a backup and had botched the process, so the partition I had mounted rw was the one I was trying to delete. Because I was running admin mode, I had booted off a boot image. The net result was that I didn't actually do any damage to my system -- the boot image was still safe on disk, nothing but the one partition I was trying to kill was writable. I *did* have to reboot to get a useful system (interesting moving around when all you've got is your current shell process running). The lesson: if you're going to do something potentially dangerous to your system, minimize the potential for danger first. I personally vote *against* aliasing 'rm' to 'rm -i' or similar. It's far too easy to fall into bad habits, like counting on the fact that 'rm' is in fact aliased, or typing '-f' as a matter of course, or running as root. None of which will do you any good, and all of which become difficult to unlearn. Rather, I do one of the following: - Sit on my hands for 10 seconds before issuing any 'rm' as root. Literally. - Do the following: $ su -c 'chown -R karsten.karsten' $ rm -rf ...with both commands being issued from my user account. The first changes ownership of the directory tree I want to nuke to some unprivileged user. The second nukes the tree. I get two chances to see if I'm doing something stupid. If I make a typo the first time, I've got a mild PITA to restore ownerships. If I make a typo the second time, chances are I can't do anything. -- Karsten M. Self http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Opensales, Inc. http://www.opensales.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Debian GNU/Linux rocks! http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595 DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0 pgp2dZpBnhp5N.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: rm -R /usr/ - undelete....
hi ya... "interactive" mode for rm -i foo is fine...as long as you don't remove too many files ??? think the trick is if "rm -rf /usr" is a directory. rm should query you. if you do "rm /usr/blah"...than just go ahead and don't botheras if "-f" was specified ??? if you do "rm -rf /any_dir" as rootalias it ??? ... a simple aliase "rm -i" drives me nuts... and too lazy to type rm -f too and better still if you can find a usable/workable "undelete" programeven better... - long ago found something that works only for small files/dirs - oh welll...too many possibilities.just have a good backup/recovery/undelete system in place...that will get you up and running within the hour... c ya alvin On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, S. Salman Ahmed wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > >>>>> "JIS" == Jacob I Stowell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > JIS> hello i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. > JIS> I guess it is a bad idea to issue the following command: > JIS> > JIS> rm -R /usr/ > JIS> > JIS> i try to look at the bright side, you know make lemonade and > JIS> all that, so at least i get a new system as a result of my > JIS> bonehead mistake. Hopefully i will make different, and yet > JIS> equally idiotic mistakes in the future. > JIS> > JIS> thanks for listening, i just needed to vent. > JIS> > > One way to reduce the likelihood of sth like that from happening again > is to alias rm to "rm -i" which puts rm in interactive mode. That way rm > will prompt you for everything but at least it will remind you whether > or not you really should go ahead. > > Its not foolproof, however, since you could still type "rm -f" or "rm > - -fr" which will override the interactive mode ... > > Be esp. careful when logged in as root. > > - -- > Salman Ahmed > ssahmed AT pathcom DOT com > > http://www.pathcom.com/~ssahmed > GnuPG Key fingerprint = A6DB 6C85 DE5A 33BB E873 E437 58B2 09CD 977B 900B > > -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- > Version: GnuPG v1.0.1 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.5 and Gnu Privacy Guard > <http://www.gnupg.org/> > > iD8DBQE5QuQRWLIJzZd7kAsRAqIQAKDCk6ep7HVLsbpR2Za97TJgd/4suwCeOzI6 > QIcQnoYVQrQHTW3Q8/D8Nw8= > =qM9X > -END PGP SIGNATURE- > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null >
Re: rm -R /usr/
hi ya yeahand luckily... /usr is already backed up on cdrom... just need to update the missing files/bins/libs ( i hope it works ? )... and than apply your new apps/patches ?? i like /usr/src to be in a separate partition that is backed up or mirrored... all clients mount /usr/src (ro) to minimize duplication of stuff we all did rm -rf / at MOST once i hope...eheheeh "experience" is the best teacher...many lessons to learn from rm -R 'anything" or rm -rf or c ya alvin On Sun, 11 Jun 2000, Colin Watson wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. I guess it is > >a bad idea to issue the following command: > > > >rm -R /usr/ > > > >i try to look at the bright side, you know make lemonade and all that, > >so at least i get a new system as a result of my bonehead mistake. > >Hopefully i will make different, and yet equally idiotic mistakes in the > >future. > > Hmm. Bad luck there. At least it wasn't /, so you get to keep /home. The > mind boggles as to how much I'd lose if I zapped that and didn't have > backups ... >
Re: rm -R /usr/
Hi Aaron! On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Aaron Solochek wrote: > Now I have it aliased to interactive mode, which is annoying at times, but [ ^^ rm -- PP] > I haven't made a mistake like that again. Does not work for me. After 2 days I started using -f with rm all the times. Even more dangerous. :) yours, peter -- http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~ppalfrad
Re: rm -R /usr/
Yep... I was working with a filesystem I had mounted in /slink, and I issued rm -r /etc, trying to remove the mounted etc... oops... Now I have it aliased to interactive mode, which is annoying at times, but I haven't made a mistake like that again. -Aaron On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Jacob I. Stowell wrote: > hello > > i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. I guess it is > a bad idea to issue the following command: > > rm -R /usr/ > > i try to look at the bright side, you know make lemonade and all that, > so at least i get a new system as a result of my bonehead mistake. > Hopefully i will make different, and yet equally idiotic mistakes in the > future. > > thanks for listening, i just needed to vent. > > -jake > > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null > >
Re: rm -R /usr/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. I guess it is >a bad idea to issue the following command: > >rm -R /usr/ > >i try to look at the bright side, you know make lemonade and all that, >so at least i get a new system as a result of my bonehead mistake. >Hopefully i will make different, and yet equally idiotic mistakes in the >future. Hmm. Bad luck there. At least it wasn't /, so you get to keep /home. The mind boggles as to how much I'd lose if I zapped that and didn't have backups ... -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
rm -R /usr/
hello i am a new debian user and i just learned a hard lesson. I guess it is a bad idea to issue the following command: rm -R /usr/ i try to look at the bright side, you know make lemonade and all that, so at least i get a new system as a result of my bonehead mistake. Hopefully i will make different, and yet equally idiotic mistakes in the future. thanks for listening, i just needed to vent. -jake
Re: What to do after "rm -r /usr"?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andy Spiegl) writes:
> Oh, boy! A friend just called me and said he did a
> "rm -r /usr" by mistake. He did stop it after a while,
> though, so that he can at least still do a little bit
> on his system.
>
> Now, he asked me, what he should do in order to get back
> to a stable system again. I suggested letting dselect
> install all packages again. But how can he make dselect
> think that the packages aren't installed yet??
>
> Or is there a better method? Please help me helping him.
> BTW, he has "bo" installed.
To tell dpkg that nothing is installed, your friend can do the
following: (sed is in /bin, so should still be around)
cd /var/lib/spkg
cp status status-old
sed -e '\f^Status: fs/ installed$/ not-installed/' < status-old > status
However, before he then turns dpkg loose on his system, I suggest that
he get a copy of the file base1_3.tgz on put it into /tmp (on my 1.3.1
cd, this file is in bo/disks-i386/current/; it's also the file that
goes into the base disk images - if all your friend has is these base
disks, there is a way to reconstruct this file - let me know) and do:
cd /
tar -xvkzf /tmp/base1_3.tgz usr
tar -xzOf /tmp/base1_3.tgz var/lib/dpkg/status > /tmp/base-status
# That's a capital "o", not the digit zero in the previous line
Then, so that dpkg can know about the packages installed by the base
install, he needs to run the following perl script (since perl was
restored by the preceding tar statement):
#!/usr/bin/perl
# This script takes the file /var/lib/dpkg/status and the file
# /tmp/base-status and creates a new status file (called
# /var/lib/dpkg/status-new) which looks just like /var/lib/dpkg/status
# except that it has the installed/not-installed status taken from
# /tmp/base-status
$/ = "\n\n";
open(BASESTATUS, ") {
($package) = m/^Package: (.*)$/m;
($stat1, $stat2, $stat3) = m/^Status: ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*)$/m;
$packhash{$package} = $stat3;
}
open(CURSTATUS, "/var/lib/dpkg/status-new");
while() {
($package) = m/^Package: (.*)$/m;
if (defined($packhash{$package})) {
s/^Status: ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*)$/Status: \1 \2 $packhash{$package}/m;
}
print NEWSTATUS $_;
}
# end script
Then do a
cd /var/lib/dpkg
diff status status-new | more
Just to make certain that the above script didn't mess things up, then
do a
mv status-new status
And dpkg's status file should now list everything installed that comes
installed on the base distribution, and everything else as
not-installed. Hopefully, dselect can then be safely used to install
everything again.
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Re: What to do after "rm -r /usr"?
> Oh, boy! A friend just called me and said he did a > "rm -r /usr" by mistake. He did stop it after a while, > though, so that he can at least still do a little bit > on his system. > > Now, he asked me, what he should do in order to get back > to a stable system again. I suggested letting dselect > install all packages again. But how can he make dselect > think that the packages aren't installed yet?? I solved an ugly problem like this a while back. I believe the solution was to make /var/lib/dpkg/available an empty file. rick -- These opinions will not be those of ISU until it pays my retainer. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
What to do after "rm -r /usr"?
Oh, boy! A friend just called me and said he did a "rm -r /usr" by mistake. He did stop it after a while, though, so that he can at least still do a little bit on his system. Now, he asked me, what he should do in order to get back to a stable system again. I suggested letting dselect install all packages again. But how can he make dselect think that the packages aren't installed yet?? Or is there a better method? Please help me helping him. BTW, he has "bo" installed. Thanks so much in advance! Andy. Andy Spiegl, University of Technology, Muenchen, Germany E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL:http://www.appl-math.tu-muenchen.de/~spiegl PGP fingerprint: B8 48 24 7B DB 96 6F 1C D9 6D 8E 6C DB C2 E7 E9 o _ _ _ - __o __o /\_ _ \\o (_)\__/o (_) --- _`\<,__`\<,__>(_) (_)/<_\_| \ _|/' \/ -- (_)/ (_) (_)/ (_) (_)(_) (_)(_)' _\o_ ~~~ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
