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A man appears to have deleted his entire company with one mistaken piece of code.
By accidentally telling his computer to delete everything in his servers, hosting provider Marco Marsala has seemingly removed all trace of his company and the websites that he looks after for his customers.
Mr Marsala wrote on a forum for server experts called Server Fault that he was now stuck after having accidentally run destructive code on his own computers. But far from advising them how to fix it, most experts informed him that he had just accidentally deleted the data of his company and its clients, and in so doing had probably destroyed his entire company with just one line of code.
The problem command was "rm -rf": a basic piece of code that will delete everything it is told to. The "rm" tells the computer to remove; the r deletes everything within a given directory; and the f stands for "force", telling the computer to ignore the usual warnings that come when deleting files.
His backups were also mounted at the time. That's a nightmare scenario, right there.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @11:35PM
Guessing it was harder to delete punch card backups though? Anyone have experience with that one?
We have to schedule time to run our programs... My time has finally come to compile (onto tape), and I'm carrying several stack of freshly punched cards. An intern carrying coffee takes a corner and slams into me, cards explode into the air in slow motion I see weeks of my life flashing before my eyes. My glazed expression is broken by the visibly shaking intern's squeak, "Oh crap! I'm so sooooo sorry." He frantically begins picking up the cards. I slowly turn and walk away, still holding a few handfuls of coffee stained punched cards. "Meet me at my desk. You're going to learn how to punch cards. Don't bring coffee."
The guys who were running their program ahead of me turn look at each other. I hear a whispered, "YES!" They must have needed more CPU time. I begin to suspect I've been set up... The entire time the intern is with me sorting the numbered cards and punching new ones for the next few days I speak only in metaphorical double entendre concerning "what occurred". I conclude he's either extremely stupid, or a very convincing spy.