What's the biggest mistake you've made on a server?

NickM

I think mine would have to be what happened to me today. I accidentally deleted /etc and didn't have a recent backup of it. Fortunately, I did have a backup of my nginx config and a very old backup from a previous install.

Thankfully I've never done rm -rf / except intentionally on a machine I was just messing around with. Mistakes happen to the best of us, so what's the biggest mistake YOU've made?

Mon5t3r

mv /* /some/public_html/

instead

mv ../* /some/public_html/

jarland

yum update

NanoG6

@Mon5t3r said: mv /* /some/public_html/ instead

mv ../* /some/public_html/

giang

SSH, backup and reinstall the OS, then realize that I SSH and backup wrong server :(

MrAndroid

Reinstalled the wrong server.

fly

centos

MikHo

Started to buy vps.

djvdorp

rm -rf / --no-preserve-root

ErawanArifNugroho

rm -rf /

jcaleb

delete files and configuration.... only to realize I forgot to ssh and I'm still in my desktop.

MrAndroid

@djvdorp said: rm -rf / --no-preserve-root

How is that a mistake when you wanted to do it? (--no-preserve-root)

fly

@MrLawoodle said: How is that a mistake when you wanted to do it? (--no-preserve-root)

cuz he's trying to be funny

Maounique

I am using mc for all the tasks around. Guess is a reminiscence of the old norton commander (oh tempora, when norton was actually making useful things). Thus, it happened quite frequently to delete in the wrong panel. At least once a year i do things like these that end up being costly. Fortunately, as any paranoid person, I keep backups of the back-ups on virtual machines of which i take snapshots every hour... M

inverse

:(){ :|:& };:

Mon5t3r

@inverse said: :(){ :|:& };:

prepare your boat.. flood is coming!!!

Raymii

:(){ :|:& };: nobody sets their ulimits?

jhadley

rpm -e rpm

eastonch

yum remove bash :(

serverbear

Moderator on a forum I own decided to prune old threads, unfortunately he pruned everything that hadn't had a reply in 7 days (i.e. about 80% of 1 Million posts). Stupidly our backups hadn't been working so we lost everything.

HalfEatenPie

@serverbear said: Moderator on a forum I own decided to prune old threads, unfortunately he pruned everything that hadn't had a reply in 7 days (i.e. about 80% of 1 Million posts). Stupidly our backups hadn't been working so we lost everything.

Ouch, dang.

Presbytis

Howcome so many people ever tried rm -rf /?

djvdorp

@Presbytis said: Howcome so many people ever tried rm -rf /?

Curiosity if Linux would prevent us from actually doing it and to see if it was possible while running the OS :P

Boltersdriveer

@inverse said: :(){ :|:& };:

assdkasdlas you crashed my node. You owe me $10,000 in reparations.

just kidding.

ErawanArifNugroho

@Presbytis said: Howcome so many people ever tried rm -rf /?

I forgot it, and suddenly pressing Enter lol

rds100

I typed "poweroff" and shutdown a node instead of the VPS i wanted to shutdown.

eastonch

LOL @rds100

MrDOS

Tried to repartition a KVM instance and completely fubar'd the whole thing. Ended up having to reload it. No data lost – I'd had the sense to make a backup directly before the attempt – but it was a waste of two or three hours.

Randy

screwing up the server and to do a clean re-install

Maounique

@rds100 said: I typed "poweroff" and shutdown a node instead of the VPS i wanted to shutdown.

Welcome to the club... It was a time I had multiple machines named debian and didnt notice when I was in which terminal window... Happened so frequently to shutdown the server when I was going home, that I decided never to name a machine debian again and also to quit the habit of shutting down from terminal. M

Chronic

@giang said: SSH, backup and reinstall the OS, then realize that I SSH and backup wrong server :(

This.