Windows users click on advert offering to infect PC for free

Because I know that if I saw such an ad, I'd probably write the URL down and boot Linux (as screwed up my Linux install is atm). Then I'd go to the URL. Just because I'm both curious and relatively infection-immune.

I got a rash once, but never an infection...

Quoting:I got a rash once, but never an infection...

Its funny you say that because someone recently asked me how many times I have had to re-install Linux because I had too. Because of a virus infection or something of the like.

I said I had installed at least a dozen different versions of Linux on my computers because I wanted too, but not because I had too..

:-)

LOL, I forget what life is like for windoze users, I've been running linux since 1993, have had probably 20 different computers since them - I've never had to reinstall because of an infection, or corruption or whatever.

I've upgraded the distro with a clean install before, but that's about it.

> I've never had to reinstall because of an infection, or corruption or whatever.

I had a hard disk crash once that required a complete reinstall. Fsck could only recover about half of the data on the hard drive. Except for that, my only reinstalls have been to upgrade to a new machine or a new release.

My Ubuntu install got corrupted once. Apparently apt-get dist-upgrading from breezy through dapper to edgy didn't go off too well. Al kinds of weird things started happening though everything looked fine at first. That's when I switched to Debian proper.

Still, a Hard-Disk failure and a corrupted install are not viruses..

I love Linux..

:-)

rm -rf / made me reinstall once.... (I was actually trying to clean out a directory and accidentally put a space between / and the dir name...oops)

Quoting:m -rf / made me reinstall once....

Linux is so reliable and stable we tend to forget it is not perfect. Well, it doesn't make us perfect either.

A program is only as smart as the person(s) who wrote it, and then only reacts to the intelligence of the user using it at any given time.

Quoting:I was actually trying to clean out a directory and accidentally put a space between / and the dir name...oops

I came close to that, too. I was on the lab's main server via ssh and did something like that, but the flaw was that I missed that the * key on the numeric keypad was not working.

The cause to this intermittent issue in RH 7.2 and/or lab equipment has not to this day been established, but I saw it on and off while there.

So, because I was following proper procedure, and not su root, all I killed was my home dir.

I restored my home dir from my personal manual backup on the system I was ssh'd from. No biggie, lost 2 days work, not a whole lab whose 8 years work was stored there.

But I was a bit shaken, and let the sys admin know of the problem so he could pass it on.

Quoting:Well, it doesn't make us perfect either.

Not perfect, but perfecter..maybe

LOL

Quoting:I was actually trying to clean out a directory and accidentally put a space between / and the dir name...oops

That's why I [almost] always put -v flag too. At least I can see what's going on and react (hopefully) quickly.

Quoting:A program is only as smart as the person(s) who wrote it, and then only reacts to the intelligence of the user using it at any given time.

Problem is when the usage is typing commands like '@$&(@Dbchb/=6^%' - sometimes it's all too easy to make a small but devastating mistake. Heave you heard of TECO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Editor_and_Corrector) or APL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language))? ;)

I was trying to figure out a way to set the user and groups for .files in a script. I found out NOT to do

sudo chown newuser,newgroup .*

(Blush) I'll let you comment on it but try not to be too harsh!

Doing

sudo chown newuser,newgroup .??* did what I wanted. . ..

Took me awhile to get stuff cleaned up!

Quoting: dek: sudo chown newuser,newgroup .*

The regex ".*" of course includes ".." and "../.." and "../../.."...

The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

Hours of fun, yowzuh!

dek, been there, done, that.