Disclaimer: Do not run this command.

  • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
    16·
    17 hours ago

    I did chmod -R 666 / when I started playing with Linux in 1999. It did not end well.

    Sudo didn’t really exist back then, you ran things as root like real men. /s

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    1082·
    1 day ago

    Obligatory DO NOT RUN THIS ON YOUR COMPUTER (or anyone else’s).

    You’d think with fully open permissions, everything would work better, but many programs, including important low level things, interpret it as a sign of system damage and will refuse to operate instead.

    If you do run it, you’d better have a backup or something like Timeshift to bail you out, and even if you do have that, it’s not worth trying it just to see what will happen.

    It’s not quite as bad as deleting everything because you can boot from external media and back up non-system files after the fact, but the system will almost certainly not work properly and need to be repaired.

    You have been warned.

    • toynbee@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 hours ago

      One time I introduced someone to Linux then left them to their own devices.

      I returned to them hours later to find out they had gotten annoyed with permissions errors and run chown -R ${THEIRUSER}: /.

      The results were not what they wanted.

    • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      46·
      1 day ago

      New guy at work ran this to try to fix permissions on his home folder, accidentally ran it on root (both would have been bad)

      Several highly paid and experienced Linux admins finally just gave up and deleted the server and built a new one from the backups.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
          15·
          17 hours ago

          One of our servers is a rotting carcass being kept alive by our collective prayers. It runs Windows 7 and custom software whose developer is dead and the source is missing, nothing has been updated for over a decade, and it has its own independent UPS because once it goes down, it has an extremely slim chance of recovering, and we’re afraid to test it. It controls the card entry system into the building, including the server room. Boss doesn’t want to replace it because we’d have to replace all of the terminals and controllers too, and it hasn’t catastrophically failed yet.

          You’re right. It’s not a pet. It’s like one of the Saw movies: if it dies, we’re all fucked.

          • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            3·
            5 hours ago

            The question I often ask clients who think this way is "How much would it cost if it did fail? Let’s say this happened today. What would be the cost to replace it NOW and not only that but make sure people who are working can still do so with the interruption?

            Now how much would it cost to schedule the interruption and manage the fall out in a way that is controllable?

            For some, the catastrophic failure points to “hey I fixed the thing!” And the incentives for that kind of person are different from the person whose job is to mitigate risk.

            It sounds like your boss is the former. In which case it’s going to be fun when it fails.

          • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
            7·
            9 hours ago

            So… the dead server controls who is even able to enter the building? Wow. That is one big juggernaut of a problem heading for you.

        • Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
          2·
          21 hours ago

          I learned this relatively quickly running my own server with the intention of my family also using it. Data on a separate drive, backed up regularly and automatically. System on it’s own drive, dd’d when it’s in it’s final state and backed up before I screw around any deeper than trying out a new container. I can bring my server back up in however long it takes to transfer data.

  • neomachino@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    7·
    18 hours ago

    Back in my early days of Linux I ran this exact command, I forget why, but for some reason my WiFi stopped working immediately after and then SELinux started yelling at me for some reason. I tried to fix SELinux and most certainly commited an innumerable amount of cardinal sins.

    I had to reinstall whatever distro I was running at the time