Ow.
this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2024
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I once had a directory in /tmp called etc which contained subdirectories for something I was migrating.
I thought that I was in /tmp when I ran rm -rf etc... I was actually in /
ZFS and dotfiles are your friend. Sorry for your loss.
Sorry for your loss. I did something similar recently. A script was creating a "~" folder in my notes folder. I wanted to delete it... Thankfully it stopped at some file it couldn't remove and my dotfiles are in git.
Here's a rule I learned the hard way a few decades ago:
- If you type "rm", take you hands off the keyboard and take one deliberate breath before continuing your command.
- If you then type "-r", do it again.
- If you then type "-f" do it again.
- In all cases, re-read what you wrote before hitting ENTER.
I'm a big fan of starting the command with a #, then removing it once I'm happy with the command to defend against accidentally hitting enter
Putting ~ next to the enter key on keyboards (at least UK ones) was an evil villain level decision
When I'm unsure, I ls <the-glob>, chek, then replace ls with rm.
I never thought of doing that in 40 years. It's a great idea actually. Thanks!
I really like this # idea. I've also taken to holding off on adding sudo when deleting privileged files
Or have backups (lol)
AND have backups.
In the few years of me exclusively using the command line to manage files, even having rm aliased to rm -rf, and at some point to sudo rm -rf, out of convenience, I think it has happened thrice that I deleted the wrong file, and twice I was able to restore it with (hourly) backups. The third time, it was a minecraft world which I had created to test some mods and the server start script, and I had excluded it from backups because my ~/games dir is usually only used by steam.
Tipps to prevent future accidents:
- Set up BTRFS snapshots with Timeshift or Snapper. Switching to BTRFS is worth it for snapshots alone.
- Do regular backups on a device that can not be reached by rm: vorta local on external hdd that you connect once a week OR vorta/borg2 to a NAS/Server that does BTRFS snapshots itself OR Nextcloud to sync to a server that has a trashbin OR git to a server. Just remember that Nextcloud and git are unencrypted, so the server has to be secure and trustworthy. Vorta and borg2 can be set up with encryption.
Mistakes are unpreventable due to our error-prone brains, but it is a choice to repeat them.
I’m a complete moron,
You are not,
Every person learning with the hardway isnt a moron,
You have to do, to really learn,
If you do it again though...
🫢 🤷♀️ I would say, that depend the personnal situation,
But i think, OP learned :)
You're just the latest member of a long and storied fraternity of the best worst operating system architecture.
https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
One of us...
I should’ve […] used trash
For those who don’t know: trash-cli
What an awesome tool that I wish I knew sooner. Also the && operator in sh. I think you can figure out what happened.
Also the && operator in sh. I think you can figure out what happened.
I'm guessing something like... Copy file/dir from location A to location B and then delete from A, but the copy had failed (and the delete unfortunately worked fine)?
I left the last sentence open ended, for comedic effect, but if you really wanna know:
I transcoded videos with ffmpeg, and tried to exit out of the bash script with ctrl C. the script was something like:
for
ffmpeg file finishedFile;
rm file;
my ^C broke out only from ffmpeg and before I realized what happened the file got removed and the next ffmpeg call filled my terminal. I tought the key didn't register, or something was stuck, so I pressed it again.. and again.. it cost like 45minutes of footage, wasn't that important tho.
It upsets me to no end that this isn't a standard package 😭
I should’ve had that backed up
Absolutely! IT's time to check out Stow now. With this you can easily manage your configuration and dotfiles (and all other data) in a single location.
https://venthur.de/2021-12-19-managing-dotfiles-with-stow.html
if your session is still running you can use env to help reconstruct it
I should have had backups of important files in my home directory
Lessons learned the hard way
But... why?
Can you say why were you trying to rm -r your .cache anyway? Also RIP.
Probably the number one cause of borked Linux systems - trying to "de-bloat",
Save space probably
Reason's I never use auto-complete in the terminal. Sadly, that's sometimes not enough.
Reasons no have backups more like. No need to make life hard
just be careful and review what tab-suggest shows.