Re: OT: data destruction classics (was: Re: Error converting from 1.4.4.1 to 1.5.0?)

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Feb 15, 2007, 02:51 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702141836510.20368@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070215021345.GB29732@spearce.org>

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Simon 'corecode' Schubert <corecode@fs.ei.tum.de> wrote:
> > Bill Lear wrote:
> > >I'm still muttering to myself that I could be that dumb...
> > 
> > Still better than trying to backup with
> > 
> > tar czvf data* destfile.tar.gz
> > 
> > automatic tape backup is a real helper then :)
> 
> or manual backup to "tape", where the tape device supplied was
> the only disk...  SunOS 4 did not take too kindly to its kernel,
> swap space, root fs being overwritten...

Hey, I can beat that (stop me at any time you've heard this story. No? Ok, then..)

I auto-dialed my harddisk.

I had this auto-dialer, that would send "+++" + "atz" + "atdt..." to dial the number to the university dial-in farm that was always busy for hours at a time, and since I've never been much of a user interface person ("No really? Linus, please tell more! I would never have guessed!"), it was basically

	autodial /dev/ttyS1

or something very similar. It was really stupid too, so if it got some other answer than "BUSY" or "CONNECTED" back (or timed out), it would just go on to the next number and try again.

Anyway, the smarter among you will already see how I by mistake filled up one of my harddisk partitions with Hayes "AT" modem commands, and deleted my Minix installation. AND THE BASTARD NEVER ANSWERED!

That was one big (perhaps _the_) impetus for just deciding to make Linux good enough that I wouldn't need to actually reinstall Minix. Happily, it was already able to bootstrap itself at that point, it just wasn't quite as good yet. I fixed that in short order, and indeed, I never did end up feeding the 17 floppy disks into my computer to reinstall Minix.

Moral of the story: "Stupidity is what makes the world go round."

Or something like that.

			Linus