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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm working on a some materials for a class wherein I'll be teaching some young, wide-eyed Windows nerds about Linux and we're including a section we're calling "foot guns". Basically it's ways you might shoot yourself in the foot while meddling with your newfound Linux powers.

I've got the usual forgetting the . in lines like this:

$ rm -rf ./bin

As well as a bunch of other fun stories like that one time I mounted my Linux home folder into my Windows machine, forgot I did that, then deleted a parent folder.

You know, the war stories.

Tell me yours. I wanna share your mistakes so that they can learn from them.

Fun (?) side note: somehow, my entire ${HOME}/projects folder has been deleted like... just now, and I have no idea how it happened. I may have a terrible new story to add if I figure it out.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I did something similar (that my professor still talks about in class as a cautionary tale)

I ran chown -R user .* (intending to target all hidden files in the folder) and for people that don't know .* also matches .. (.. was / in this case) which changed the permissions on all files on the system to that user, including sudo.

We fixed it by mounting the root of the file system in a docker container which effectively gave us root.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I've also been hit by .* matching ... First of all, I find this really really jarring. It makes sense and doesn't at the same time. I also wonder how to properly only glob the hidden files but I'm too afraid to experiment.