[TriLUG] A funny thing happened

[M. Mueller (bhu5nji)]

On Friday 25 January 2002 03:12 pm, you wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, M. Mueller (bhu5nji) wrote:
> > On Friday 25 January 2002 02:05 pm, you wrote:
> > > On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, M. Mueller (bhu5nji) wrote:
> > > > rm -fr ~
> > > >
> > > > Here's the funny part.  I meant to enter:
> > > >
> > > > rm -fr ./~
> > > >
> > > > "Golly," I thought to myself as I began to fully appreciate what that
> > > > command had gone and done, "that sure is a powerful command."  It had
> > > > completely erased my user directory contents.  I was laughing at my
> > > > mistake while I reloaded MDK8.1 twice and setup my mail accounts
> > > > again.
> > >
> > > Ummm... why do you need to reinstall the OS because you deleted
> > > user-space files?
> >
> > Too stupid to know how to get back configurations files and <looks down
> > and kicks dirt> I didn't have a back up.
>
> Sorry if this is beating a dead horse, but I wouldn't expect configuration
> files to be generated in user space by an OS install; I'd think you would
> just re-run the application for the "first" time or take whatever other
> steps are involved in initial configuration. Doesn't an rm -fr ~ just make
> you effectively a new user?
>
> Not that backups are a bad thing :)....

You mean all the .kde,  .drakfw, .younameit files would come back if had 
logged out and logged back in?  Or do you mean that I could have logged in as 
root, deleted my old self and created a new  account for myself and things 
would've been back to normal (less all that email)?

I'm gonna do the Samba thing and write some crontab entries to tar and cp 
stuff in my user accounts.

To be fair to myself, I do backup my development work regularly - but that's 
on another machine.  The machine that I hosed is my "How to break the Windows 
habit" machine that I use for email and surfing.  I still think in Windows 
terms: when hosed, reload.

mjm