Rule for Beginners
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/14479799
Linux Best Practices
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/14479799
Linux Best Practices
I don't know what that is, but it feels to me like it might be a fork bomb.
Edit: Yep, fork bomb.
Because I didn't know what a fork bomb was:
a fork bomb is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack wherein a process continually replicates itself to deplete available system resources, slowing down or crashing the system due to resource starvation.
[...]
A classic example of a fork bomb is one written in Unix shell
:(){ :|:& };:
, possibly dating back to 1999, which can be more easily understood as
fork() { fork | fork & } fork
>
> In it, a function is defined (fork()) as calling itself (fork), then piping (|) its result into itself, all in a background job (&).
>
> The code using a colon `:` as the function name is not valid in a shell as defined by POSIX, which only permits alphanumeric characters and underscores in function names. However, its usage is allowed in GNU Bash as an extension.
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb)
You're telling markdown to format the code in the language fork() {
and then break the code block early by not having >
in front of the next line. Here's a quoted code block formatted in sh
:
fork() { fork | fork & } fork
It seems the app I use to browse doesn't play entirely nice with markdown. I updated my formatting a little, thanks for the notice.
Can confirm, it takes up so much space it's surprising they install it by default, my drive is like 99% free now.
Unrelated, but none of my files are in my documents folder anymore and I can't run steam, anyone know if they relied on the French language pack?
It was a joke, this time.
But back in my university days (holy shit I feel old, that was around 17 years ago), when flash drives were still new ish technology. I had installed a Linux live cd, which was a brand new idea back then, on my USB stick that also contained a bunch of my files.
I thought it would be a fun idea to rm -rf / to see what it would do to a live cd environment.
Then I realised it was not a fun idea as I started to see the names of my project documents being deleted.
I get these are jokes but I really don’t find anything funny about it, it becomes a meme and then people start getting more creative and pushing it more and being more covert and people come up with other little japes then new Linux users get their shit destroyed and maybe important info gets lost or precious memories so they say Linux is a piece of shit and go back to windows.
It’s not even funny to start with so when it inevitably inspires people to be assholes and bullies that’s all we’ve achieved.
copied from the original post but was exactly what was going through my mind
Yeah it's a joke that's at least a decade old, probably over two decades old.
And one of the most important aspects of comedy is knowing your audience. If this was said to a group of linux sysadmins I guess it's not dangerous, but it's still an old joke so not going to get much of a laugh. But if it's said to people new to linux, then it can cause damage. So it's either not funny (we all heard that one before) or an asshole prank, so not funny and malicious.
Absolutely agreed. I caught major flak the last time that I saw this. Not a fan of setting up ignorant newbs to be laughed at and potentially need to write fresh resumes. Yeah, you shouldn't take a meme at face value for advice on your professional life but, it just comes across as a bit mean-spirited.
This is not malicious because it will not work. You'd need --no-preserve-root
to actually do anything.
Edit seems I was wrong
Imagine my mixed emotions when I’ve been doing ‘ls -la’ since I remember and watch someone do ‘ls -al’.
I always do - lha or -la, but sometimes I did -a and I want the L, so I reuse the old command and add a l, making it -al.
I always put the f last, as in first the whole command, then go back and write the -rf, just because if I accidentally press enter I don't want an uncompleted path to be destroyed.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/VFevH5vP32s?t=54s
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is
Sudo - Super user do; or root < admin
RM - Remove
F - forced, it won’t warn you that you are deleting your system
R - Recursively, it will delete every directory hereafter
/ - the start of your system…so everything but it not being there would do this as well
Never rm -rf if you actually need to do it for something then you know well enough that it is necessary
To me this is no different than telling someone to kill themselves as a joke.
It was funny years ago as a teenager but now it's just mean and a dick move.