this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024

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264

What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 10 months ago by danielquinn@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.ml

302 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm working on a some materials for a class wherein I'll be teaching some young, wide-eyed Windows nerds about Linux and we're including a section we're calling "foot guns". Basically it's ways you might shoot yourself in the foot while meddling with your newfound Linux powers.

I've got the usual forgetting the . in lines like this:

$ rm -rf ./bin

As well as a bunch of other fun stories like that one time I mounted my Linux home folder into my Windows machine, forgot I did that, then deleted a parent folder.

You know, the war stories.

Tell me yours. I wanna share your mistakes so that they can learn from them.

Fun (?) side note: somehow, my entire ${HOME}/projects folder has been deleted like... just now, and I have no idea how it happened. I may have a terrible new story to add if I figure it out.

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[–] MonkeMischief 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Ha! I just did something like that. I thought I had "orphaned" BTRFS snapshots taking up space.

I opened a file explorer as root...I deleted this one that wasn't listed.

Oh wait..."Writable snapshot"...? Oh...no.

Yeah suddenly no programs or anything worked. Sadly there was no snapshot restoring out of that one! (That I would be capable of, anyway!)

So yeah, I managed to deliberately bumble past several safeguards into the "I should know what I'm doing" area, and found a magical way to rm -rf / from the GUI, essentially. Wee!

Thankfully, /home was its own partition, so aside from minor inconveniences bringing .configs back over and other little tweaks I'd implemented, I have reinstalled OpenSUSE Tumbleweed leaner, meaner, and cleaner. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

ACTUALLY, glad I backed up /home before the reinstall because the first reinstall attempt failed and wiped it!

Backups, kids. They really are the difference between "Aw darn, live and learn."...and complete heartbreaking despair.

[–] kawa@reddeet.com 3 points 10 months ago

Breaking the bootloader, uninstalling nvidia drivers ton install mesa without removing mesa/nouveau from the blacklist

[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

I activated aur in majoro. Twice.

Now I use endeavourOS to install my arch.btw, lol

[–] luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I footgunned myself with iptables once and couldn't even google how to fix it. (Well, I could with my phone, just not the convenient google - copy - paste - run workflow)

I don't remember the details, but I was trying to control internet access of a VM guest and ended up controlling my own too.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

I once had grub and rEFInd installed on the same system and an Arch update hosed both. I was able to fix it with an Ubuntu LiveCD and went back to Ubuntu. I still use Arch in a VM as a treat.

[–] tiita@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Rermoved the Wireless card drivers while troubleshooting the Internet connection..

[–] No1@aussie.zone 2 points 10 months ago

I tried upgrading instead of a fresh install.

Needless to say, I ended up doing a fresh install eventually...

[–] notthebees@reddthat.com 2 points 10 months ago

Mine was wiping my vps while backing it up. Luckily for me I only lost some files that I could easily replace.

[–] konsn@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

One time on Manjaro i had a dependency issue regarding python3. So i just removed it. The I watched in horror as i saw what packages depend on python3, including pacman and manjaro-system, but did not dare to interrupt the process and end up with a half-broken system, and my curiosity wanted to see it play out. Then I rebooted, and thus legally turned my Manjaro system into a half-working Arch install. It even displayed the OS as Arch Linux. Still managed to fix it without reinstalling by downloading the package files from http mirrors, but if i was smart the entire thing should have taken 5 minutes instead of a full afternoon. Was a valuable learning experience tho

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