• Black Bart (unregistered)

    In the frist place, why did they give F.P. Dingbat the rights to "to SU on every machine in the company"?

  • (cs)

    Is that a pun that an article about deleting slice 0 deletes the website home? (Or that snoofle might need to ask Remy how to include html comments in articles..)

    I have taken Snoofle behind the woodshed and taught him a lesson - Remy

  • ThaMe90 (unregistered)

    The homepage only brakes when you select Summary as the way you want to display the articles. When selecting Full Article, it still works. ;)

  • Case (unregistered)

    Something like this is the reason I named a script that would run a console command on every virtual container in an OpenVZ 'clusterfuck.sh'.

  • (cs)

    The customer is always right is one of the worst myths ever propagated in this industry, or any industry for that matter.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF about the html comment is that such a warning already exists on some distributions

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    The customer is always right is one of the worst myths ever propagated in this industry, or any industry for that matter.

    It doesn't even mean what people think it means!

    It was intended entirely to mean 'Don't argue with the customer when they want an unflattering garment colour.'

    Instead, companies now take it to mean that you must allow any customer to shit on any employee with impunity.

  • daureg (unregistered) in reply to ratchet freak
  • Jim the Tool (unregistered)

    So let me get this right. Customer rings up wanting to delete 'slice 0', and gets the run around. Finally support tells them how to do it, with warnings not to do it.

    Customer then does this command on every single machine in the company?

    If customer merely wants to delete it on one machine, then how did they manage to do it to every machine? How does one manage to be logged into every machine at once?

    captcha luctus. The customer certainly didn't luctus out that time...

  • Ebbe K (unregistered)

    IMNSHO the real WTF is that it seems no one told this customer what this would do to his computer (i.e. render it totally useless). They all just said "don't do it".

  • anonymous_coder() (unregistered) in reply to edgsousa
    edgsousa:

    I have taken Snoofle behind the woodshed and taught him a lesson - Remy

    Oh myyyyy...

  • Peter (unregistered)

    Sometimes, the advice you give is disregarded. In that case, it's often best to allow the person who declined to accept your suggestion, the opportunity to learn for himself. Lessons learned this way are seldom forgotten.

  • (cs)

    E. T. got a phone call from the Customer™®©

    E. T. then phoned the software guys

    E. T. then phoned Bob.

    E. T. then phoned several other people.

    E. T. finally phoned back the Customer™®©

    But when he heard back what happened, E. T. got a deep desire to phone home and get out of this planet.

  • Moo Cow (unregistered)
    snoofle:
    del /s /q ${SomeUnsetVariable>\*.*

    [...]

    After all these decades, you'd think OS designers would have changed the rm or del command to have an implicit check to see if you're deleting the root, and force you to explicitly acknowledge (or at least use a dedicated switch) that this is truly your intended action. Perhaps even a sternly worded warning:

    Soo ... you give del a parameter to explicitly not interact with the user ("/q") and then expect it to interact with the user?

    Also, since when do we write Windows environment variable with a dollar sign?

  • Le Forgeron (unregistered)

    It's with customer like that that I dream of a state (or international ?) license with categories and points to use a computer, as for car, motocycle and truck.

    You want to remove inode 0/slice 0 from a root partition of a unix system: ok, please show me your license for unix, you need the guru level for that operation. If you call back for trouble due to our answer despite our warning, it will cost half the points of your license.

    ah... if only it could be a reality...

  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered) in reply to Ebbe K
    Ebbe K:
    IMNSHO the real WTF is that it seems no one told this customer what this would do to his computer (i.e. render it totally useless). They all just said "don't do it".
    "E. T. told him that he didn't want to do that because it would wipe out the entire file system."

    Indeed, he should have explained to him what a "file system" is. And what "wipe out" means. And "entire". And "the".

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous_coder()
    anonymous_coder():
    edgsousa:

    I have taken Snoofle behind the woodshed and taught him a lesson - Remy

    Oh myyyyy...

    Indeed. Is Remy channeling zunesis?

  • (cs) in reply to Moo Cow
    Moo Cow:
    Also, since when do we write Windows environment variable with a dollar sign?

    It's a Micro$oft variable.

  • (cs)

    Sorry snoofle, the GNU OS does refuse to execute "rm -rf /".

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Zacrath
    Zacrath:
    Sorry snoofle, the GNU OS does refuse to execute "rm -rf /".

    I don't believe you - let me just that here....

  • anonymous (unregistered) 
    ${SomeUnsetVariable>
    ?

    Well that explains why my userscript decided not to HTMLify that comment. Thanks for the mismatched square braces, snoofle.

  • PB (unregistered)

    Classic example of the IT guy not recognizing the XY problem.

    It is beyond me why he didn't help the customer delete but without doi ng the rm /rf

  • ben (unregistered)

    maybe an explanation:

    the guy was fired but still serving his last days at the company - furiously mad he wanted revenge, wrote the shell-command into the replication startup-script.

    he got caught and at the last phone-call his bosses were in the room - he told them that E.T. told him to add it to the script.

    (i had captcha 'damnum' :D )

  • (cs) in reply to Zacrath
    Zacrath:
    Sorry snoofle, the GNU OS does refuse to execute "rm -rf /".

    Interestingly - that is correct: I tried rm -rf / - it complained and asked for --no-preserve-root to work. However rm -rf /* ran happily without the switch. Well, it didn't delete everything (some files were locked) but seems to have deleted enough.

    # ls -al /
-bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory

    Oh, well - goodbye VM - you served me faithfully during the whole 2 minutes we were together.

  • Anonymous Paranoiac (unregistered)

    Clueless People shouldn't be allowed near command lines. Especially on *nix. Definitely not with access to all the machines in their company.

    Edit: TRWTF is accepting BBCode but not Markdown.

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered) in reply to Bobby Tables
    Bobby Tables:
    # ls -al /
-bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory
    That's what "echo *" is for.
  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered)

    I thought today's story was a very nice slice of life death story.

  • (cs)

    Ordinarily, experience is a great teacher. But in order for it to work, the "student" must be capable of something called "logical sequence" and have some concept of "cause and effect".

    Since F. P. Dingbat lacks all of the components required to gain experience, I'm sure he thinks he was sabotaged by the Evil Customer Service!

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Jim the Tool
    Jim the Tool:
    So let me get this right. Customer rings up wanting to delete 'slice 0', and gets the run around. Finally support tells them how to do it, with warnings not to do it.

    Customer then does this command on every single machine in the company?

    If customer merely wants to delete it on one machine, then how did they manage to do it to every machine? How does one manage to be logged into every machine at once?

    captcha luctus. The customer certainly didn't luctus out that time...

    Answer: UNIX

    Also, the WTF is always right...

  • I forget (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that *nix exposes such useless technical stuff to the end user.

  • (cs)

    Good shake for the start of the week. I'm not going to do a shit today!

  • (cs)

    Curiously, not one person here has noted the irrelevance of a discussion of the misfeatures of rm and/or Windows's(*) del command in the context of a WTFstory about deleting slices.

    Furthermore... the fact that we are talking about slices says we aren't talking about Linux on x86/x64, since Linux uses partitions rather than slices, which are a BSD-ish thing.

    And no, ET was NOT obligated to help the customer destroy his computers. He was obligated to explain that:

    1. Yes, slice 0 is needed for the OS to work. The machine will NOT work without it (if the installation is normal).
    2. It might not have been F.P. Dingbat who installed the contents of slice 0, but somebody installed it, although likely not explicitly.
    3. To reinforce point 1, deleting slice 0 will disable the machine, converting it into an expensive and noisy paperweight.
    4. If F.P. Dingbat is having disk space problems, ET's company will be happy to talk about upgrades and/or enhancements.
    5. Did we discuss the fact that deleting the slice will disable the machine? We might not have mentioned this, but it is very important.

    (*) This is just fine as a use of 's. When used as the name of an operating system, "Windows" is a singular noun - we say "Windows is an operating system"(**) and not "Windows are an operating system". And a singular word ending in "s" takes "'s", not just an apostrophe, if you follow that style.

    (**) Yes, Windows is an operating system. If you are trying to make some stupid fanboiish point by denying this, you can fuck off.

  • (cs) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    Bobby Tables:
    # ls -al /
-bash: /bin/ls: No such file or directory
    That's what "echo *" is for.

    It was more to point out that /bin was gone than to show what was left.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Curiously, not one person here has noted the irrelevance of a discussion of the misfeatures of rm and/or Windows's(*) del command in the context of a WTFstory about deleting slices.

    Furthermore... the fact that we are talking about slices says we aren't talking about Linux on x86/x64, since Linux uses partitions rather than slices, which are a BSD-ish thing.

    And no, ET was NOT obligated to help the customer destroy his computers. He was obligated to explain that:

    1. Yes, slice 0 is needed for the OS to work. The machine will NOT work without it (if the installation is normal).
    2. It might not have been F.P. Dingbat who installed the contents of slice 0, but somebody installed it, although likely not explicitly.
    3. To reinforce point 1, deleting slice 0 will disable the machine, converting it into an expensive and noisy paperweight.
    4. If F.P. Dingbat is having disk space problems, ET's company will be happy to talk about upgrades and/or enhancements.
    5. Did we discuss the fact that deleting the slice will disable the machine? We might not have mentioned this, but it is very important.

    (*) This is just fine as a use of 's. When used as the name of an operating system, "Windows" is a singular noun - we say "Windows is an operating system"(**) and not "Windows are an operating system". And a singular word ending in "s" takes "'s", not just an apostrophe, if you follow that style.

    (**) Yes, Windows is an operating system. If you are trying to make some stupid fanboiish point by denying this, you can fuck off.

    Someone who never worked in a call centre.

    You do anything legal and in-scope the customer asks, or you get fired. Period. End of line.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to Jim the Tool
    Jim the Tool:
    So let me get this right. Customer rings up wanting to delete 'slice 0', and gets the run around. Finally support tells them how to do it, with warnings not to do it.

    Customer then does this command on every single machine in the company?

    If customer merely wants to delete it on one machine, then how did they manage to do it to every machine? How does one manage to be logged into every machine at once?

    captcha luctus. The customer certainly didn't luctus out that time...

    Let me guess... maybe in a cronjob or something like /etc/profile on on NFS?

    But of course, noone will tell me whether I'm right or not.

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to daureg
    daureg:
    Nothing will protect idiots who really want to screw up the systems.

    For example, something with "dd" command in combination with "/dev/zero" or "/dev/random" can be quite dangerous. The level of insanity is just bound by their imagination.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Someone who never worked in a call centre.

    You do anything legal and in-scope the customer asks, or you get fired. Period. End of line.

    I hope they also record conversations. Someone who's that dumb is bound to sue.

  • Freyaday (unregistered)
    I only entered the one command; what the fsck did I just do?

    fsck won't save you now.

  • (cs)

    I've actually seen something similar to this happen in dos with drive partitioning. The guy was told repeatedly not to do this but he went into fdisk and did it anyway.

  • JM (unregistered)

    I was privy to this call and pretty much heard it all happen. No amount of "you can't/shouldn't/don't want to do that!!!!" in a distressed tone could sway this individual from going after and deleting slice 0. We thought it a prank or a "tester" call but nope, this was real. I believe the follow up to the call was instruction on how to use the built-in coffee cup holder as a cdrom! That part went a bit smoother.

  • ben (unregistered)

    another possible explanation: maybe he didn't actually do anything, just messed with the help desk.

  • Herr Otto Flick (unregistered) in reply to Freyaday
    Freyaday:
    I only entered the one command; what the fsck did I just do?

    fsck won't save you now.

    TBH, even if he had done this on every single disk on every single server in the company, unless he had also at the same time created a new file system in the freed space, basdlabel(8) or your friendly Sun/AIX equivalent probably could save you by rewriting a new partition table disk label into the destroyed slice.

    You only need to figure out the size and offset and you're golden. Depending on the OS, there may be a backup label written towards the end of the slice that is not removed when you destroy a slice, and then its just grvy all the way.

  • Herr Otto Flick (unregistered) in reply to Zacrath
    Zacrath:
    Sorry snoofle, the GNU OS does refuse to execute "rm -rf /".
    1. This isn't "the GNU OS" - it's a real OS.
    2. This is not about "rm -rf /"

    Fucking linux weenies - "oh look I've got zoobuntu installed by clicking next a lot, I knows UNIX now".

  • Jeremy (unregistered) in reply to foo AKA fooo
    foo AKA fooo:
    Ebbe K:
    IMNSHO the real WTF is that it seems no one told this customer what this would do to his computer (i.e. render it totally useless). They all just said "don't do it".
    "E. T. told him that he didn't want to do that because it would wipe out the entire file system."

    Indeed, he should have explained to him what a "file system" is. And what "wipe out" means. And "entire". And "the".

    Also, as we all know these WTF retellings are, in fact, transcripts of actual recordings. So we can rest assured these are the exact words used, no more, no less.

  • Freyaday (unregistered) in reply to Herr Otto Flick

    Hehe. Good to know in case I do this somehow. Though my joke still stands. :P

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    This makes me recall someone who removed the drivespace file containing C:

  • Robert (unregistered)

    I go with the customer is always right then proceed to prove why the customer is wrong. Usually after checking other things on our end.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon

    The customer is always wiped.

  • Robert (unregistered) in reply to Moo Cow
    Moo Cow:
    snoofle:
    del /s /q ${SomeUnsetVariable>\*.*

    [...]

    After all these decades, you'd think OS designers would have changed the rm or del command to have an implicit check to see if you're deleting the root, and force you to explicitly acknowledge (or at least use a dedicated switch) that this is truly your intended action. Perhaps even a sternly worded warning:

    Soo ... you give del a parameter to explicitly not interact with the user ("/q") and then expect it to interact with the user?

    Also, since when do we write Windows environment variable with a dollar sign?

    Some programs will produce a prompt even if in quiet mode for particularly dangerous situations or prompts that must be answered by the user.

  • Robert (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    The customer is always right is one of the worst myths ever propagated in this industry, or any industry for that matter.

    It doesn't even mean what people think it means!

    It was intended entirely to mean 'Don't argue with the customer when they want an unflattering garment colour.'

    Instead, companies now take it to mean that you must allow any customer to shit on any employee with impunity.

    Our workplace goes with the former I think. We don't go by the customer is always right and if the customer makes unreasonable demands then their demand might just go unanswered.

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