-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Peter Onion Peter.Onion@btinternet.com wrote:
On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 22:05 +0100, Peter Onion wrote:
I do hope that the wrecklessness with which people are treating other peoples machines on the IRC channel at the moment doesn't result in the loss of anyones important data.
It's now 03:30 and I've just woken up realising what it was that I was really concerned about....
First off let me appologise to iDunno and quinophex if it seemed I was questioning their abilities to sort out wildfire_cs' problem.
While the experts amongst us would not give a seconds thought to using commands like cp /etc/fstab /etc/modules.conf . to back up some important files before editing them, consider this scenario from last nights IRC session
Yes, and if anything like that had come up, I'd have been even *more* cautious. I think twice before using cp that way, and then a third time to be safe, but then I don't consider my self an expert, and I *have* broken more things than most people, which has led to me being rather cautious with commands such as cp,mv and rm. In this usage case, the only thing that could have gone wrong was missing the . off the end.
EXPERT: type "cp /etc/fstab ." [noob misses the "." off the end] NOOB: it said "cp: missing destination file"
now consider this slightly different scenario
EXPERT: type "cp /etc/fstab /etc/modules.conf ." [noob makes the same mistake and misses the "." off the end] NOOB: ok, what now....
If I'd seen that line, I'd wonder what the hell we were copying modules.conf for in the first place, and have flagged it as a potential killer... Oh, but of course, did I neglect to say, that the way we were doing this, cocking up that wouldn't have affected anything? Will was running as a bog standard user when he was copying fstab, i.e. he wouldn't have had write permissions on modules.conf, ergo situation avoided.
Of course it becomes apparent only later that the the noob has overwritten their /etc/modules.conf with a copy of /etc/fstab. Not good !
Only if they were root, best practice teaches us not to be root when we really don't need to be, and knowing that he'd just logged in to ubuntu and fired off a new term, we knew that he was not root.
So my not very well put point is that when "diving in" to help a new user to fix problems with their system, it is not always appropriate to tell them to do it the way you would do it yourself.
Erm, we didn't tell them to do it the way we'd do it. If I had been doing it I'd have done: vim /etc/fstab<Enter> Go/dev/sda1 /windows ntfs user,ro,umask=222 0 0<Esc>:wq<Enter>
And been very happy that when I typed mount /windows it would mount the NTFS partition at the mount point of /windows.
In last nights situation I think it would have been much better to suggest to wildfire_cs that they email a copy of /etc/fstab to either iDunno or quinophex, for them to then make the required changes and email back the changed file. wildfire_cs could then save the original and replace it with the edited version and bingo problem solved.
Erm, did you miss that we'd already copied the origional, and we got him to check /etc/fstab against the edited copy, and then, and only then, when the only difference was a line that we'd added, asked him to copy it across to /etc/fstab. I can't see how an e-mail would have helped here, and, in my experience, as soon as you start attaching files to e-mails you're fighting a losing battle, someone sooner or later loses interest in what they're doing and either doesn't attach the file, attaches a completely different file, or sends it to completely the wrong place.
Adopting a strategy where the new user's scope for "cocking it up" is minimised has got to be the way to go. Consider the aftermath of a botched attempt to fix a problem.
That's exactly the strategy we were going for, leaving as little as humanely possible to go wrong.
NOOB: My XYZ super-mega-interface doesn't work now and it did before. NOOB: You've made it worse EXPERT: You must have typed the wrong command NOOB: I typed what you told me to type EXPERT: Stoopid Noob.... etc etc etc
You've obviously not been in channel when things *have* gone wrong, and we've sat and fixed them afterwards? Also, knowing roughly what they have typed is a huge help here, as you can look back in the log, work out where they might have gone wrong, and work from there.
If all they had to do was save an email attachment then run cp /etc/XYZ.conf /tmp cp saved-email-attachment /etc/XYZ.conf and it still broke, well it least you know it was your fault and the you should continue to try and fix their problem.
It could well be $person who sent the e-mails fault... or are you suggesting that e-mail means no typos?
As I pointed out when Brett asked me when I first came across "/etc/fstab" I've been managing Unix boxes for about 20 years, and I was fixing peoples CP/M machines for a few years before that. If nothing else I've adopted a "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" attitude when telling people how to fix things (either over amateur radio,over the phone or via IRC) .
I've adopted a much more realistic approach, anything that can go wrong, *may* go wrong, and be prepared for that situation. The only times it *will* *definately* go wrong is: (1) When someone is yelling at you "It's all going to go wrong!". (2) When time is short, the phones are going mad, and you've got no time to make any mistakes, and the latest backup was 12 months ago.
I would hate to see a helpful guru get their fingers burnt by some litegeous, clueless noob who asked for help then tries to sue for damages when the noob makes a mistake and screws up their own system.
*wonders how many people you know that would do that*. And, as it's not an official "support" channel, and we're unpaid volunteers, you can take the non-existant WARRANTY and try and sue me.
When you see things like this Russian astrologer who is trying to sue NASA because their probe has upset the course of a asteroid and that has upset their "stars", you have to realise there are some real nutters out there and that you need to take extra care when offering assistance these days.
Well, I hope he's going through the american court system, he'll probably win. Personally I'd rather blame NASA for wasting huge quantities of fuel and then failing lots. Maybe I should sue NASA for continually getting peoples hopes up that $thing might work this time, and then it exploding or getting lost, or it's batteries running out etc?
Thanks, - -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk