Good vs bad or uninformed advice

[Phrazzled]

What criteria do you adopt before following advice from this forum?

I've found much that was useful and informative here, but also a lot of misinformation. As an Ubuntu beginner I find it difficult to differentiate between accurate, authoritative advice and the, perhaps well meaning but, wrong information that is so often posted.

How do you decide when advice is worth following?

Do you keep a list of infallible gurus?

Do you count the beans?

What other sieves have you developed that catch 'info gold' and reject dross?

[mdpalow]

I'm sure you'll figure it out :)

[sloggerkhan]

Intuition? I guess I've never run into completely off base advice that I've wound up following.

[jrusso2]

I don't usually ask for advice in here I usually search for it. When that fails I ask and if it makes sense I try it.

[Incense]

The community is good enough, where bad or uninformed advise is corrected fairly quickly. We just keep each other in check.

[y-lee]

I research the advice try to figure out the commands they use. Also informed user tend to sound informed. When I post advice when I am making an educated guess I state that it is just a guess, maybe i googled it and found it on another site and if so i will provide a link to the site.:)

[RomeReactor]

Hi. I think you'll find that searching the forums often yields threads where your particular problem is being discussed, and even solved. If your problem doesn't show up on a search, then posting a thread usually results in many people posting advice/solutions, and as Incense says, if some advice is incorrect, others are sure to correct it.

Beans are nothing more than a post count, not how accurate the poster's advice is.

[Phrazzled]

Thank you all for your insights.

I'm getting the message that it may be best to first do some independent research, then if that fails, ask for help here and wait for a number of replies confirming the correctness of the solution before diving in and issuing commands in Terminal.

Am I on the right path?

[Lvcoyote]

9 times out of 10 when I google a problem, the link google gives me is to these forums....LOL

[bodhi.zazen]

What criteria do you adopt before following advice from this forum?

I've found much that was useful and informative here, but also a lot of misinformation. As an Ubuntu beginner I find it difficult to differentiate between accurate, authoritative advice and the, perhaps well meaning but, wrong information that is so often posted.

How do you decide when advice is worth following?

Do you keep a list of infallible gurus?

Do you count the beans?

What other sieves have you developed that catch 'info gold' and reject dross?

He he he ... beans give you gas ....

Actually they are a count of the number of posts (outside of the cafe / backyard) a user has. Some people hide their bean counts to say "hey here is a piece of advice, don't blindly trust just because I may be full of hot air, HTH".

We do not use a rating system here as we are all volunteers. We all have strengths and weaknesses.

So what advice do I have for you, NEVER blindly follow advice., rather take it under advisement, no matter the source. If you get advice and your understanding increases or you are pointed in the right direction, it is good advice. Good advice for you may be bad advice for others.

I think what often confuses people is that there is often more then one way to accomplish a task (KDE vs Gnome, VIM vs emacs, etc) . This is confusing to new users, which way is "better" ? Usually, neither is "better", you need to discover what works best for yourself. All we can do really is offer you guidance ....

If you do not understand a piece of advice, ask for clarification or research the issue on your own, your choice.

[Whiffle]

Thank you all for your insights.

I'm getting the message that it may be best to first do some independent research, then if that fails, ask for help here and wait for a number of replies confirming the correctness of the solution before diving in and issuing commands in Terminal.

Am I on the right path?


Bingo. Also make sure you understand what the commands you're putting into the terminal are doing. Just knowing what they do will go a long way towards keeping you out of trouble.

I for one almost never post questions on this forum. Most problems I've been able to solve on my own, usually with google. Also, alot of the answers I post on this forum, I've found by googling, even for things I've never seen before. The idea is that with as many linux users as there are out there, someone else is bound to have and possibly dealt with the same problem.

In addition, wikis and forums for other distributions are often very handy for getting on the right track.

[Paulmd]

What criteria do you adopt before following advice from this forum?

I've found much that was useful and informative here, but also a lot of misinformation. As an Ubuntu beginner I find it difficult to differentiate between accurate, authoritative advice and the, perhaps well meaning but, wrong information that is so often posted.

How do you decide when advice is worth following?

Do you keep a list of infallible gurus?

Do you count the beans?

What other sieves have you developed that catch 'info gold' and reject dross?

Well, those who make lots of uncorrected typos, and grammatical errors are not the kind of people I normally listen to. Hard to understand advice can go awry.

I look for a certain clarity in a post, and a sign that it was researched, such as links and code snippits. I also make note of how serious the problem is, if it's a complicated problem, I'm more likely to ignore the person who gives a one or two sentence response.

[hyper_ch]

Well, those who make lots of uncorrected typos, and grammatical errors are not the kind of people I normally listen to. Hard to understand advice can go awry.

Not everyone here is a native english speaker... I guess most here aren't... so judging someone on spelling and grammar is not a criteria I would apply to either trust/not trust a person.

Well, best thing is always to reflect about the advice that is given and do some research yourself...

Furthermore the Bean Count is an indication - at least with regard to give malicious advice. People with high bean counts normally don't give malicious advice - if one does, he normally gets banned (it it was the case for the "sudo rm -rf /" fellow [don't run that command!!!]). However you must keep in mind, that even someone's account with a high bean count can be hacked and then the hacker gives malicious advice.
--> Don't trust blindly!!!

Also a new feature implemented is the thanks. You can see in people's profiles if others have found their advice helpful. You can also see this directly in the threads themselves. That's another indication.
BUT: Don't trust blindly!!!

You have some indications but the most valuable tool you've got at your disposal is your own brain. Use it!

[ugm6hr]

I'm getting the message that it may be best to first do some independent research, then if that fails, ask for help here and wait for a number of replies confirming the correctness of the solution before diving in and issuing commands in Terminal.

That is a sensible approach.

Even if advice is offered here - you can google key words / commands to see what they do before acting on advice. That way you learn things as you go - potentially to allow you to help others on this forum in the future! Plus - you are less likely to be fooled by malicious "help".

One other thing if no one else has mentioned it... Most Terminal commands have a help or manual (man) page - often:

man command
or

command --help

[Phrazzled]

I've made myself a list of all your helpful suggestions.

With these to guide me, I feel more confident to deal with the inevitable hiccups that are bound to occur in moving to Linux.

Thanks guys & gals for your excellent, considered advice.

[(((X)))]

What criteria do you adopt before following advice from this forum?

I've found much that was useful and informative here, but also a lot of misinformation. As an Ubuntu beginner I find it difficult to differentiate between accurate, authoritative advice and the, perhaps well meaning but, wrong information that is so often posted.

How do you decide when advice is worth following?

Do you keep a list of infallible gurus?

Do you count the beans?

What other sieves have you developed that catch 'info gold' and reject dross?

Google first
Google for commands you don t trust/know.

[hyper_ch]

I've made myself a list of all your helpful suggestions.

I run my own wiki for that... for every problem I encounter I make an entry.... normally not formatted just copy and paste of the whole thing...

that's pretty quick to make a new entry and will be good if you need it.

[LaRoza]

Usually, you can tell who has more experience by who is more assertive and give a better written response.

There was an incident where a troll was giving bad commands to people, there is an announcement on that. Those kind of incidents are rare, and I haven't seen them in a while.

You can usually trust the advice of those seem to know what the are talking about, and you can always check their responses.

Most people, including myself, spend time on the forum to help people.

[hyper_ch]

Trust is good but it's not a replacement for your brain...

Even the best supporter here might make an error and give a bad command - not by intention but it can happen...

DO NOT RUN ANY OF THE COMMANDS BELOW BEFORE YOU REALLY, REALLY, REALLY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!

e.g.
one could type


sudo rm -Rf /*

instead of


sudo rm -Rf ~/*


Small difference in typing... huge difference in its effect...

DON'T TRUST BLINDLY! USER YOUR BRAIN - IT'S THERE FOR BEING USED...

[aysiu]

Trust is good but it's not a replacement for your brain...

Even the best supporter here might make an error and give a bad command - not by intention but it can happen...

e.g.
one could type


sudo rm -Rf /*

instead of


sudo rm -Rf ~/*


Small difference in typing... huge difference in its effect...

DON'T TRUST BLINDLY! USER YOUR BRAIN - IT'S THERE FOR BEING USED...
By the way, in case any new users are reading this thread, both of those commands do bad things (erase your whole drive or your entire home directory).

[(((X)))]

sudo rm -Rf ~/* would delete your home directory, isnt it?
sudo rm -Rf /* will delete everything :(

[Desperate]

Not held back by any Ubuntu knowledge Desperate wrote.
I search, I read and wait a few hours before I try the offered solution(s) to see if there is any opposition to it. Then I go in a terminal and type the command with the -h option, read and search again before I follow the advice. I'm trying to save my XP data from an unreadable, not bootable ATA Raid drive, so I want to be careful. Advice here is mostly fast and lots of options are offered, so always be careful. It's just advice without warranty, You are still responsible for your own system.
I'm learning lots and once I have made my backups I'll install Ubuntu on this machine. (duo boot as some programs don't run too well without Billy G. ( AutoCad and my favorite game SH4 )

Nice community here and always helpful and fast when you scream loud enough :lolflag:

Have a good one
Richard

[LaRoza]

Trust is good but it's not a replacement for your brain...

Even the best supporter here might make an error and give a bad command - not by intention but it can happen...

DON'T TRUST BLINDLY! USER YOUR BRAIN - IT'S THERE FOR BEING USED...

A note for users:

I am working on a System Restore program (like the Windows one), and accidently deleted my source code when I went to delete the restoration files I was testing because I put a space between the '*' and the file name elements I wanted to delete.

Luckily, I was able to disassemble the byte code and recover most of my work. So use your knowledge when given commands. Most mistakes are just mispellings and will cause no harm.

[hyper_ch]

*added an additional warning to my rm commands*

[yabbadabbadont]

A note for users:

I am working on a System Restore program (like the Windows one), and accidently deleted my source code when I went to delete the restoration files I was testing because I put a space between the '*' and the file name elements I wanted to delete.

Luckily, I was able to disassemble the byte code and recover most of my work. So use your knowledge when given commands. Most mistakes are just mispellings and will cause no harm.

:lol: Been there, done that. In my case, I wiped out the custom source code for over a hundred customers at my first Unix job... fortunately, (for me), my mentor at the time made a backup the night before on a whim. I think that he felt a stirring in the force, but he denied it. :D

Once you do something like this, trust me, you will never do it again. Once burnt, twice shy, and all that.

[Irihapeti]

A note for users:

I am working on a System Restore program (like the Windows one), and accidently deleted my source code when I went to delete the restoration files I was testing because I put a space between the '*' and the file name elements I wanted to delete.

Luckily, I was able to disassemble the byte code and recover most of my work. So use your knowledge when given commands. Most mistakes are just mispellings and will cause no harm.

Been there, done something similar. I accidentally or without thinking put a / in front of a character when I was removing some files. I had to reinstall as a result. If I'm about to do a remove operation that isn't very basic, I first type "ls (rest of command)" beforehand. If the names of lots of files go sailing past, that I didn't expect to see, then I still have the chance to modify it.

Of course, a good backup before major modification also comes in handy.

[bodhi.zazen]

setting an alias is quite useful to prevent this.

alias rm='rm -i'

Put this in ~/.bashrc and /root/.bashrc

At least you get a warning b4 deleting things.

[dcstar]

setting an alias is quite useful to prevent this.

alias rm='rm -i'

Put this in ~/.bashrc and /root/.bashrc

At least you get a warning b4 deleting things.

But where do you stop?, other "Beginners" have done boneheaded things like muck around with file permissions and wrecked their whole systems, so do you somehow also change chmod, chgrp and chown to try and prevent people from implementing their own stupidity? - it will just never end as long as they have permission to do drastic things to their systems.

Half the problem is misguided "advice" offering solutions to problems that say to use terminal when there is a perfectly good (and far safer) GUI option available, as far as I am concerned these people who always throw out terminal commands that beginners just don't understand - and put them in an environment where they can build up false confidence and damage their systems - are doing Linux more harm than good with that sort of "uninformed advice".

Let people use the terminal - and all the power that goes with it when using sudo - after they no longer have to ask questions in the "Absolute Beginner" forum, then they may have learnt enough to comprehend the results of their actions (and mistakes).

[bodhi.zazen]

But where do you stop?

He he he ... here are my recommended aliases :


# Confirm
alias mv='mv -i'
alias cp='cp -i'
alias rm='rm -i'

# No colbber
set -o noclobber # Override >|

But, in answer to your question, that is where I stop.

IMO this is not just for beginners, the main protection IMO is typos, which can (and I was in fact responding to the post of a more experienced user in this thread) happen to anyone.

The other things you suggest are of course true, but are (sometimes) more easily undone then the above commands. Part of the reason we do not run as root is to protect us from ourselves.

I also disagree, I think the terminal and command line should be introduced / encouraged to new users. Sure it is nice to user a GUI, I know I do, but the command line in Linux is quite powerful and the terminal is much more uniform then the gui tools.

[LaRoza]

The command that wiped my source was:



rm * .tar.gz


Note, there is a space....

I had to get the byte code out of the trash, from a previous version, and decompile it.

That is the second time I did something like that, always in the early morning though.

The first one was more humourous. I was chatting on IM and had deleted my home directory. How you ask? Same thing, but with a ~ instead of an *. I was doing somethings as root....

With no home, I couldn't open or running anything at all. I could chat, but I knew if I closed it, it would be gone.

I back up my home, so I was able to restore in less the time it took to reboot though.

[yabbadabbadont]

tar just saved me a bunch of pain a little bit ago. I whipped up the following script in a hurry to archive some directories and then remove the originals. Can you spot the error?


for i in *
do
tar cvjf $i.tar.bz2 && sync && rm -r $i
done

](*,)

Fortunately, tar printed an error message and returned failure, so the rm commands never ran.

tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.

Just goes to show that you are never too experienced to make a stupid mistake. :lol:

Edit: I CAN'T BELIEVE I MADE ANOTHER STUPID MISTAKE...

I updated the script with the proper syntax but, just to be sure, I added an echo command to see what would happen. Like so:

for i in *
do
echo "tar cvjf $i.tar.bz2 $i && sync && rm -r $i"
done
Life is good, right? So I strip off the quotes and let that puppy fly..... I LEFT THE STUPID echo IN THERE! Someone please put me out of my misery.

(No, like an idiot, I don't have a backup.)

[LaRoza]

Just goes to show that you are never too experienced to make a stupid mistake. :lol:

The more you know, the more likely you'll be using these commands. Fun to messup though. It is always a good laugh afterwards.

[yabbadabbadont]

Well, I managed to recover two thirds of the data from other sources. I can recreate the missing third. It will just take a few days (again). What was I saying about once burned? :lol:

Bad Yabba! Bad Yabba! No soup for you!

I just need to get into the same habit I developed for work. Never remove something until you have at least one extra copy that has been verified. (When on a customer's machine, two verified copies.) Oh yeah. Repeat after me: BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP (to the tune of Balmer's "developer's" chant ;))

[LaRoza]

Repeat after me: BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP (to the tune of Balmer's "developer's" chant ;))

Always do (to the tune of his wild monkey dance)

[hyper_ch]

Doing 4 backups a day ;)