Post #1931641
2026-05-02 10:13 UTC
as an IT consultant who was often hired as an emergency firefighter when the office building was already half ablaze (virtually), but it's way more common than one assumes. With human-caused disasters, it's just that a) only the huge ones reach the public and b) only the huge ones are in any way newsworthy.
So I managed to kill my first Internet-attached Linux server as a student in 1993 or so with a bash multiline loop trying to uninstall packages and had to reinstall it. <- not newsworthy.
Replies (1)
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@yacc143@mastodon.social 2026-05-02 10:18
But I learned for all times that tar file listings generally include also directories. If you pipe those into xargs rm -Rf, in case of SLS/Slackware packages (naked .tgz files back then), you will also end up with a completely deleted /bin /usr /var you name it, just from one package that you wanted removed. The simplest solution, is to reboot and restart the installation. Personally I can completely recommend this method teaching about the -t option of tar.