OPSE, original reply only sent to Brett.

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 22:21 +0100, Brett Parker wrote:

We are not being wreckless, we are going very slow and explaining the steps.

quino: Type cp /etc/fstab . wild: cp: missing destination file

I think at that point you should have stopped and asked yourself if it was wise to carry on. I know what my answer would have been.

Maybe when you loose the "I'm a teenager, I know everything" attitude you will learn to expect things to go wrong and take a more cautious approach to things like this.

Sorry, but just out of interest, how did *you* first encounter fstab?

Probably about 20 years ago when I was managing a lab full of Sun 3/60s, some Whitechapple MG1s and a Vax 11/730 and 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. ;-)

As long as you do not remove random lines from it, it's fairly damned safe to edit.

You think ?

If you don't know what's safe and not safe to remove, don't remove things. Adding an extra line for mounting a partition read only is not rocket science. We are, as we said in channel, going through *very* slowly and checking and double checking before anything anyways.

Also, as wildfire_cs had already said, he's got *several* ubuntu live cds laying about, so if all else fails, we can repair it from there.

And you're sure they will have net access when they need to ask you how to fix it ?

Oh, and while I've been typing this response to your irrational post...

Sorry, but I don't think I'm the irrational one here....

• --- Start Paste from IRC ---

22:16 <+quinophex> wildfire_cs: you don't have any important data in your ubuntu install do you? 22:16 < wildfire_cs> nope havent beena able to get at important dat yet thats wat im tryin to do

• --- End Paste from IRC ---

It's a *clean* ubuntu install that he'd *only* just installed before connecting to IRC. We've done *FAR* scarier things over IRC... *waves to Jenny* - like compiling kernel modules for wifi cards...

I understand that at the moment you're probably a bit on edge due to the looming job interview.

WHAT has that got to do with it ?

I've no problem with people going "it's all doomed", but it's a little much when you're doing that and not listening to anyone else, and haven't bothered to ask the major questions that you outlined here.

And Neither had you though to ask about important data until AFTER I had gone. I wonder if it would have crossed your collective brain cell at all if I hadn't posted this to the list ?

Peter O

On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 10:52:54PM +0100, Peter Onion wrote:

OPSE, original reply only sent to Brett.

moderately funny, imho ;)

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 22:21 +0100, Brett Parker wrote:

...

We are not being wreckless, we are going very slow and explaining the steps.

quino: Type cp /etc/fstab . wild: cp: missing destination file

I think at that point you should have stopped and asked yourself if it was wise to carry on. I know what my answer would have been.

At this point we pointed out that the . was v.important, hopefully it provided a learning experience.

Maybe when you loose the "I'm a teenager, I know everything" attitude you will learn to expect things to go wrong and take a more cautious approach to things like this.

*shrug* the approach used has served me well in the past, the amount of risk involved was so low that if the person involved was that incapable then we would *never* have got to the part where we copied the edited fstab over /etc/fstab. I find your comment quite ott, I think we all know that we don't know everything, but at the same time we do know how to provide sensible tech support over irc.

...

Sorry, but just out of interest, how did *you* first encounter fstab?

Probably about 20 years ago when I was managing a lab full of Sun 3/60s, some Whitechapple MG1s and a Vax 11/730 and 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. ;-)

...and you said you managed to bugger up editing it... if you had adopted the practise we used on this occaision then it would have been v.unlikley that would have happened.

...

Also, as wildfire_cs had already said, he's got *several* ubuntu live cds laying about, so if all else fails, we can repair it from there.

And you're sure they will have net access when they need to ask you how to fix it ?

Uh, yes we were certain of this.

...

much when you're doing that and not listening to anyone else, and haven't bothered to ask the major questions that you outlined here.

And Neither had you though to ask about important data until AFTER I had gone. I wonder if it would have crossed your collective brain cell at all if I hadn't posted this to the list ?

Look, stop being such an offensive old stick in the mud, we have helped someone, and at the point before we would have told him to copy the new fstab over the old we would have asked him about data, but we *already* knew that there was no important data on the machine.

Peter, I'm going to kind of miss you on irc if you decide to piss off now, because of what happened tonight, I mean alug is just a simple collective of people who like Linux. I don't want to start a massive flame war or argue with you, but at the end of the day I would really like to be told where we went wrong. You took the approach that telling anyone how to edit fstab over irc was "evil, bad, wrong" which I don't agree with, how can anyone learn otherwise? using IRC gave the guy a *better* chance of fixing problems than working off some random webpage, at least this way there was plenty of backup/support and at least 2 of us casting eyes over what we were doing. If it was working from some random webpage or book then where is the support and help if something goes wrong and you end up with an unbootable system?

Bejesus, I like you, I just find that your response to this is way ott...

Adam

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 22:28 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

Of course, all your _important_ data is backed up anyway. Right?

I'm pointing at the stack of CD-RW's on the shelf, and the USB token that carries current "stuff" to back up on a machine at work.

Peter O

On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 11:50:17PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:

On the one hand, you have a point: everyone, please be careful what commands you run on your system, especially as root. You can try

Heh, root wasn't actually used at any point, but we did use sudo :)

The commands ran as sudo were

sudo cp fstab /etc/fstab sudo mkdir /windows (not fhs compliant, so sue me)

and, um... tbh i think that was it.... To be fair I did make a mistake first time round, but we picked that up via the double checking so we did this for a second round.

complaining. Try "How to deliver a report without getting lynched" at http://www.asktog.com/columns/047HowToWriteAReport.html for tips.

Bah! stop referrencing random urls, tis annoying, I follow urls like the way you have quoted with a large pinch of salt. ;)

Anyhow I am trying to be diplomatic (I hope I have been, although my comment on irc of "stop being such an old woman" wasn't taken in such humor as I intended I guess, for which I apologise. Although, end of the day I still can't see that we did anything wrong, Brett was double checking everything I said to do, and also pointed out (obviously deliberate) my mistake but even then the mistake wasn't anything that could have endangered anything (apart from my rep perhaps).

Adam

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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

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 09:57:03AM +0100, Adam Bower wrote:

<final post from me on this subject, getting bored now>

Ok, I lied so sue me ;)

I just want to apologise to Peter about the tone of that email, he had already sent me an email offlist to clear the air but I stupidly didn't see it this morning in my inbox as it was nestling in between a large deluge of spam. See, spammers have a lot to answer for!

I certainly wouldn't have used the tone that I chose in my previous email if I had read the email from Peter first (although, the points do still stand).

Adam (eating humble pie) Bower

At the risk of invoking Godwin, this is exactly how Hitler used to behave in IRC.

Sorry, I had to say that, it's my condition... anyway..

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.

With the greatest amount of respect in the world, that would have involved all of the same file operations as doing it via IRC.

Both options involve backing up the file, then up to a sudo/root login, then overwriting the file.

The only significant difference I can see between the handholding approach, and the "via email" approach, is that the second approach involves the user doing those file operations unattended, sudo/root login unattended, and making crucial decisions, as sudo/root, unattended.

I have no wish to gainsay anyone here, still - if the options are "logging in as sudo/root unattended to apply a pre-edited file" vs. "having several people who understand what you're doing helping you in realtime and checking your output", then doesn't the preferable path almost seem to be a matter of objective fact?

Just goes to show how we all have different ways of thinking, and how we shouldn't assume that somebody else's decisions aren't the result of sound critical thought, just because they don't agree with our own.

Of course, when you raise matters of liability, you raise the question of whether people should refuse to help others through fear of things like litigation. Making a personal decision on that one, doesn't mean you're blind to the possible consequences. It may be an ethical decision.

On the whole, it's completely heartening to see you've such an ethical attitude to technical support.

Hope the job interview goes well, and that you got back to sleep quickly.

Be lucky.