Re: Favourite Urban Myth

Recursion - it called itself endlessly. $HOME/bin (where it lived) was the leading element of $PATH. After a minute or less, it was thousands of processes deep. After changing it to "/bin/rm -i $*" it worked as intended.

Don Granaman
[certifiable OraSaurus]

• Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 4:23 PM

> ?? rm -i $*
>
> I'm having a hard time understanding why this would spawn more than one
> process.
>
> Jared
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "Don Granaman" <granaman_at_cox.net>
> Sent by: root_at_fatcity.com
> 04/10/02 11:25 AM
> Please respond to ORACLE-L
>
>
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
<ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
> cc:
> Subject: Re: Favourite Urban Myth
>
>
> Do Unix admin fiascoes count? I once had an SA do "# chmod -R 700 /dev"
> because he thought someone was inappropriately dinging something there.
> Can
> you imagine how many things break when /dev/null is unwritable and
> unreadable? And when /dev/vx/rdsk/... (with a database on raw devices)
> are
> not readable or writable by Oracle?
>
> The same fellow also once changed oracle's UID and the dba GID and did a
> chown oracle:dba on all of oracle's directories and files - without
> telling
> anyone or shutting down the instances running on the server. Oracle hung
> -
> suddenly it did not own any processes or semaphores! ("ipcrm" is not the
> preferred method of shutting down oracle!)
>
> My own most embarrassing fiasco occurred many, many years ago - when I was
> fairly new to Unix. I created a shell script named "rm" which did "rm -i
> $*" You can imagine what happened the first time I ran it - processes
> were
> spawning faster than I could kill them, even with a script... It was admin
> by BOB time. (BOB=Big Orange Button.) Fortunately, it was on a
> development
> server!
>
> Don Granaman
> [certifiable OraSaurus]
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 10:53 AM
>
>
> > On Tuesday 09 April 2002 20:03, Deshpande, Kirti wrote:
> >
> > Well Kirti, if you're going to morph this thread into stupid DBA
> tricks...
> >
> > We had one young fellow working for us that was new to unix. He had
> > just discovered that he could run a job in the background via '&' at
> about
> > the same time he was assigned the task of recompiling all of the files
> > for an entire application.
> >
> > You can probably guess the rest. ;)
> >
> > About the time he started bragging about how "quickly" he was able
> > to recompile all of the code, we were all headed to the server room
> > to find out why our dev server was suddenly so slow...
> >
> > Jared
> >
> >
> >
> > > We had one dba who (by mistake) issued a 'chown -R oracle:dba'
> followed
> by
> > > 'chmod -R 750 *' from the '/' directory while logged in as root.
> > > Fortunately, it was a server with no production databases on it, just
> a
> > > couple of Development databases. She never new what a '#' prompt was.
> She
> > > is long gone but such memories linger for ever ;)
> > > It took a while for the SA's to let Oracle DBAs get root privileges
> after
> > > that episode.
> > >
> > > And in my previous job, I had a junior DBA who tried to kill a
> background
> > > job (%1) with 'kill -9' as root. The problem was, he forgot to put in
> '%'
> > > before the '1' .... and then came to me stating that the Server does
> not
> > > respond anymore :( while I was talking to the Customer who had beaten
> him
> > > to place a trouble call about 'the database just hung-up'..... Is
> there
> a
> > > Darwin Award for the Living (DBA)? =;)
> > >
> > >
> > > - Kirti
> > >
> > --
> > Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> > --
> > Author: Jared Still
> > INET: jkstill_at_cybcon.com
> >
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> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> --
> Author: Don Granaman
> INET: granaman_at_cox.net
>
> Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051
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> Author:
> INET: Jared.Still_at_radisys.com
>
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-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Don Granaman
  INET: granaman_at_cox.net

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
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