Join the fight against malicious commands given to new users

[jdong]

http://ubuntuforums.org/announcement.php?a=54

I have posted a thorough global announcement regarding this situation. I hope people will find it an informing and educational read.

[Nano Geek]

Already done.

[toupeiro]

No, that's a good point, but at least the simple warning can lead to a conversation that educates.

For example...

A: I can't delete this item from my trash can
B: Try pasting this command in the terminal: sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*
A: But your signature says never to sudo rm -rf anything...?
B: That's because we have had some malicious trolls asking new users to delete their entire hard drives. sudo rm -rf means to remove with administrative privileges recursively and with force. In this case, we are doing so only for your trash (not the entire installation)
C: What user B is saying is true. You may also want to read the manual for rm to get a better idea of how it's used: man rm
A: Okay. Now I get it.

I can see where you are coming from. I just remember similar things happening in BBS's and newsgroups during the early days of the windows registry. Its extremely powerful, if you take the time to know what you are doing and keep a general principle that anything you do to your computer will have an effect, desired or undesired. Awareness will determine which one will take place.

I've modified my signature with a link to linux online MAN pages in support of overall awareness of CLI commands.

[jflaker]

Ok, I am seriously not trying to play devils advocate here, but I think that making the rm command this taboo thing in bold saying never sudo rm -rf anything is counterproductive. Rather, why don't you promote man pages. Like.. for ANY command you see on ANY internet site, check the man pages BEFORE you execute it.

rm is only dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. Don't scare absolute beginners with rm -rf. Teach them how to use rm safely!

I changed my sig to reflect your statement! I think this better explains our intention while putting forth a powerful message!

[p_quarles]

http://ubuntuforums.org/announcement.php?a=54

I have posted a thorough global announcement regarding this situation. I hope people will find it an informing and educational read.

That's a great explanation, jdong. I've linked to it in my sig.

[ticopelp]

Done and done. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

[jdong]

Thanks; feedback appreciated.

P.S. The link has double-http's and is broken in your sig

[Irihapeti]

I have some reservations about man pages. Many of them - not all, though - seem to me to be written by geeks for geeks. On a number of occasions I've looked at them and felt just plain overwhelmed, and I don't consider myself particularly stupid. (Even my kids agree!) So how is a new user, especially one who is under stress because of something that's gone wrong, going to cope?

Just my thoughts.

[p_quarles]

Thanks; feedback appreciated.

P.S. The link has double-http's and is broken in your sig

Fixed. Thanks for catching that.

[Tundro Walker]

Almost sounds like some kind of intelligence needs to be built into the command-line for this.

In the old DOS days, when you'd put "del *.*", it would prompt you, asking "this will wipe out everything...are you sure? Y/N"

For situations like this, I'd think the command-line commands would have some built-in safety net. But, I'm guessing they probably do and the -f switch makes it where it doesn't prompt the user at all?

I know the DOS del command had a switch you could use to auto "yes" everything, and not prompt/warn. It's a real dilemma.