this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Linux

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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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Tinkering is all fun and games, until it's 4 am, your vision is blurry, and thinking straight becomes a non-option, or perhaps you just get overly confident, type something and press enter before considering the consequences of the command you're about to execute... And then all you have is a kernel panic and one thought bouncing in your head: "damn, what did I expect to happen?".

Off the top of my head I remember 2 of those. Both happened a while ago, so I don't remember all the details, unfortunately.

For the warmup, removing PAM. I was trying to convert my artix install to a regular arch without reinstalling everything. Should be kinda simple: change repos, install systemd, uninstall dinit and it's units, profit. Yet after doing just that I was left with some PAM errors... So, I Rdd-ed libpam instead of just using --overwrite. Needless to say, I had to search for live usb yet again.

And the one at least I find quite funny. After about a year of using arch I was considering myself a confident enough user, and it so happened that I wanted to install smth that was packaged for debian. A reasonable person would, perhaps, write a pkgbuild that would unpack the .deb and install it's contents properly along with all the necessary dependencies. But not me, I installed dpkg. The package refused to either work or install complaining that the version of glibc was incorrect... So, I installed glibc from Debian's repos. After a few seconds my poor PC probably spent staring in disbelief at the sheer stupidity of the meatbag behind the keyboard, I was met with a reboot, a kernel panic, and a need to find another PC to flash an archiso to a flash drive ('cause ofc I didn't have one at the time).

Anyways, what are your stories?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I have a stupid one, but far from funny.. I've been using and building computers for a very long time so I'm far from a noob, but I'm still quite cautious, bordering on paranoid, so I like to unplug all other drives when re/installing an OS just to avoid stupid mistakes. I go through the installer on the livecd, there's only one drive to choose from so I don't think much about it, select that it should erase everything, I set up the new partition structure, and start the process. After about a minute I begin wondering "why is it taking so long?", and "what is that ticking noise? SSDs shouldn't be making any sounds when written to", when I realize that I had unplugged the wrong drives and that I was currently overwriting my main storage drive. Of course I had backups of the most important things like photos and code, though not really synced for a couple of months so I lost some stuff permanently.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

I can totally feel that sudden clot in the gut the moment you realize on which drive the action is happening, just by reading this.