on Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:56:26AM -0600, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier (jbrockmeier@earthlink.net) wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> > By the way, is there any way of setting up an "undelete" for averting this
> > kind of disaster? My Dad mentioned that Novell Netware has an undelete
> > which basically puts off really deleting stuff for about 5 days --- unless
> > it has to because of lack of space. This sounds like a _very_ useful
> > feature.
>
> Good lord, please NO. Having an "undelete," IMHO, leads to very
> sloppy practices - better to learn to make backups of important
> data - and to use the root account with care.
I tend to agree. Backups are an essential element for system data
security. Reliance on undelete leads to sloppy habits.
> There were some good suggestions, though - make an alias from
> rm to 'rm -i' so that you always get prompted against making
> massive mistakes.
I prefer not doing this. Treat 'rm' as if it's the red hot poker it is.
In particular, aliasing rm to interactive mode gets you in the habit of
relying on a crutch which may not be be present.
I prefer *not* to invoke rm as root whenever possible, particularly when
dealing with whole directory trees.
There was a thread on this topic as well recently -- how to automate
practices with find. When deleting large swathes of files, my MO is
typically:
- Create a script listing the files to be deleted, explicitly. Scan
this several times before committing it.
- When deleting a tree of directories, chown it to a standard user,
then delete as that user. You get a two-stage commit, and the
dangerous action (rm) is performed as an unprivileged user.
> I've accidentally deleted a few projects in my own home directory -
> but I make backups at least once a week and burn them to CD. Even in
> the event of a catastrophic failure of my hard drive, I only need to
> buy a new drive and copy my home directory over.
A stitch in time saves nine.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
Attachment:
pgpLHcuB5AtWE.pgp
Description: PGP signature