Firstly, let me say I find StackOverflow's trigger-happy attitude as annoying as everyone else. "Not a real programming question" for questions needed to solve programming problems or blocking comparisons ... #fail.
Now that I've said that, I do think this hoax question should be closed because one of the principles is that it should be based on real problems people face, which is a good way to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. By definition, this hoax is not real. While we could imagine it's possible, that's pure speculation and there are infinite other scenarios we could imagine, but we don't need to ask them as StackOverflow questions.
On a practical note, it's worth banning just to prevent a thousand viral marketers and recruiters falling over themselves to compose the most attention-grabbing fake questions in the next month.
It shouldn't matter whether the question was based on a real situation, or if the story was just made up for "motivating" the question [1]. I often (> 50% of the time) make up or change the backstory for my SO posts, to prevent people from asking "But what is your real problem", "What have you tried", and so on, and because I want just a simple answer to my question goddamnit.
([1] Even if it is a hoax, or a joke, the question has merit. Just close as duplicate without getting all worked up about it.)
its not so much "Not a real programming question", its more "Not able to be answered objectively". Stack Overflow is meant to be a wiki of questions and answers, and like a wiki, it wants to only present facts and not opinions.
if one wants subjective questions and answers, there are other sites in stackexchange for that
As noted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497590 , the author of the question has since stated that he was attempting to see whether there were any "serious administrators" at ServerFault who would know that what he had claimed he had done could not have happened as stated.
I wonder what he's making of all of the people now conflating Stack Overflow with Server Fault. Server Fault says its blurb, is a question and answer site for system and network administrators.
Banning the account will have no effect. In the future people will just use throwaway or sockpuppet accounts, so who cares?
Also, I don't see who benefits from this hoax. Who is going to use him as a hosting provider whether the problem was real or fake. Both indicate that he's not a reliable provider.
It's not a "hoax" in any sense. Just a plain lie. A hoax has to be fairly large-scale and affect a lot of people (negatively). The original question contained no hyper-links at all. (Ironically, one was inserted by subsequent editors).
The question is plausible. I once deleted a /lib directory due to a misspelled variable in a script! Recovery consisted of copying libs from another installation of the same OS.
ServerFault appears to complaining that the question is generating traffic --- to ServerFault!?
If we look at the user's account, it's clean. Only through a LinkedIn reference do we see that "bleemboy" is Marco Marsala. Like, what fraction of visitors are clicking through all that?
> I once deleted a /lib directory due to a misspelled variable in a script!
Ah yes, the old "rm -rf $TEMPBASEEDIR/lib" bug. It is so easy to have that happen.
Or like I did, write a script that assumes a certain environment variable is set outside the script... and then forget to set the variable before running it!
To prevent these problems, use "set -u" at the top of your bash scripts. This will halt the script instead of silently inserting an empty string if you use an undefined variable.
"set -e" (halt on nonzero return code) and "set -o pipefail" (propagate error returns through a pipe) are also useful options, or combine them with:
set -euo pipefail
Here's a great article that describes these options and some tips for using them:
I think it has affected a lot of people. hundred of thousands read that question. friends who are not programmers sent me links to that question and asked me to not do the same. people lost their time answering and finding solutions.
it was a hoax. a troll. not very far away from screaming bomb on an train.
I actually witnessed a funny incident, similar to this, when I worked at a National Laboratory some years back. A team I was working with had a big project that formed the core of a larger system, so they created a directory named "core" and spent the next N months happily churning out code. Meanwhile, the system administrator had a set of backup scripts that he'd configured to ignore core dump files (yeah, you can guess where this is going), but the scripts that he wrote didn't differentiate between files or directories that had "core" in their name, so nothing got backed up for almost a year. Over the Christmas break, the system administrator decided to install a new version of Solaris, and wiped all the drives as well. I came in to work after the break, and everyone was freaking out because all their code was gone. They managed to recover some of it, because some developers had separate copies of parts of the system, but it was still a disaster.
Every once in a while, at one job or another, someone will suggest we name a source code folder "core" and I get to relate that story all over again.
This shows the problem with the way Stack Exchange doles out moderation abilities (automatic once you hit a certain karma threshold). You get a lot of people who want to use these newfound powers. That's understandable, for sure. The issue is that in their eagerness to be a good mod and help clean up and get to do some cool moderatory stuff, they get overzealous and it results in hamfisted, overbroad moderation because everyone is looking for a reason to close the question. The higher principle behind the community gets lost in a sea of technicalities.
Stack Exchange could improve their guidance and closure templates to help curb the habit of closing useful stuff all the time, so part of it is an identity issue that SE sites have within themselves, but it's compounded and exacerbated by a lot of fresh faces looking for a reason to stop the discussion so they can click their brand-new "lock thread" button.
This is an extremely popular narrative that seems to pop up every time a Stack Exchange post geta onto the HN or proggit front page.
The problem with this narrative is that it is almost never substantiated. So instead, let me posit an alternative hypothesis, as someone who has gotten his hands dirty on the various Meta sites:
The reason most people feel that SE has a moderation problem is because the moderation process on SE is significantly more transparent than almost any sites out there. And because of this transparency, people find it easier to point blame at these users.
The transparency part I hope is obvious - when a post get moderated on other sites, the full edit history and name of the moderators involved are almost never revealed. The close reasons are in general decided upon by the users themselves. Individual moderation decisions can be contested and debated on the Meta sites, and there are checks on almost every level.
In other words, the moderation process is already fairer than most other sites, where the moderation process is essentially a black box with no means of appeal. But people don't like it because the content which elsewhere would have been swept quietly under the rug is still visible and indexable.
It was originally closed as a duplicate, the other question had more detail and mentioned the --no-preserve-root flag.
Now it has also been merged with this question. The helpful replies are still there, but the incentive to use the Stack Exchange sites for other purposes is reduced. I think this was a nice solution in this case.
Apart from the SO moderation question, I'm quite bugged by a bigger one: How the hell this ended up in mainstream media?
Can't we just ban every online buzz outlet from talking about programming, hardware or computers until they actually understand what they are talking about? I know what I'm asking is beyond impossible, but I'm really annoyed by the amount of buzz-impinged-naiveté blossoming everywhere each time someone makes headlines of something IT related.
And then please let's ban them from talking about science and anything science-related too. Exaggerated IT stories are annoying, exaggerated science and scaremongering with "scientists prove X causes cancer!!111" is socially damaging and actually kills people.
(A) the user skipped --no-preserve-root to the command, if he really wanted to delete /, he would need to try harder on a modern distro, because the rm command would stop the attempt
(B) ansible by default fails on undefined variables, meaning it would never execute the command
(C) Jinja template variables are actually {{foo}} not {foo}, so {foo} in bash prints a literal foo
So this triply couldn't happen. Finally, most people should probably be using the file module to delete files, though if people want to call out to the shell they can with any config tool.
I hate this was even posted because it reflects poorly on me and was in exceptionally bad taste to imply ansible would let it happen.
But can you shoot yourself in the foot with any config tool? If you want to, yes. Can you be bitten by a bug? Yes. Do tool authors make mistakes? Yes.
But it was a mean thing to do, and it's not something the tool would even allow, and it hurts when tech journalists (arguably some of the worst reporters in existance) blindly parrot the article without fake checking (just like they'll also do fake comparisons that just recycle blog posts).
I guess part of the reason the hoax is annoying is that it usually couldn't happen. Recent versions of GNU coreutils rm will refuse to delete /, in order to avoid this kind of bug [1]. So if he was on a linux system like he described, his bug should not have had that effect. The question spreads misinformation (although a fairly harmless kind).
My guess is because there's already a question about accidentally your whole system, which makes it a "dup". Not to mention, it _was_ a "viral" marketing campaign, and I'm sure the community isn't too happy about advertising disguised as legitimate questions.
I don't think they should delete it. Just ban the user for abuse, and edit the post to explain the situation. People spent time answering that question, and it's plausible someone might find it helpful.
Basically a backup script that was supposedly run via Ansible on all servers, which mounted remote backup drives and then instead of pulling a fresh backup deleted everything including the mounted backup.
The linked article says they already determined "What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question". What the article is asking is what to do with the fake internet points.
It's not against the rules to answer your own question, as far as I'm aware. If the question is one that other users may ask, and you have an answer, I don't see what's wrong with posting questions and immediately answering them.
mmahemoff|10 years ago
Now that I've said that, I do think this hoax question should be closed because one of the principles is that it should be based on real problems people face, which is a good way to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. By definition, this hoax is not real. While we could imagine it's possible, that's pure speculation and there are infinite other scenarios we could imagine, but we don't need to ask them as StackOverflow questions.
On a practical note, it's worth banning just to prevent a thousand viral marketers and recruiters falling over themselves to compose the most attention-grabbing fake questions in the next month.
captainmuon|10 years ago
- You can post questions out of simple curiosity. - You can post rhetoric questions where you already now the answer ( http://stackoverflow.com/help/self-answer ).
It shouldn't matter whether the question was based on a real situation, or if the story was just made up for "motivating" the question [1]. I often (> 50% of the time) make up or change the backstory for my SO posts, to prevent people from asking "But what is your real problem", "What have you tried", and so on, and because I want just a simple answer to my question goddamnit.
([1] Even if it is a hoax, or a joke, the question has merit. Just close as duplicate without getting all worked up about it.)
RubyPinch|10 years ago
if one wants subjective questions and answers, there are other sites in stackexchange for that
JdeBP|10 years ago
I wonder what he's making of all of the people now conflating Stack Overflow with Server Fault. Server Fault says its blurb, is a question and answer site for system and network administrators.
oliyoung|10 years ago
Having done rm -fr / on a box before, I think it should stay. The incident was fake, the problem is real, it elicited real responses and has value.
shaftway|10 years ago
Also, I don't see who benefits from this hoax. Who is going to use him as a hosting provider whether the problem was real or fake. Both indicate that he's not a reliable provider.
kazinator|10 years ago
The question is plausible. I once deleted a /lib directory due to a misspelled variable in a script! Recovery consisted of copying libs from another installation of the same OS.
ServerFault appears to complaining that the question is generating traffic --- to ServerFault!?
If we look at the user's account, it's clean. Only through a LinkedIn reference do we see that "bleemboy" is Marco Marsala. Like, what fraction of visitors are clicking through all that?
Stratoscope|10 years ago
Ah yes, the old "rm -rf $TEMPBASEEDIR/lib" bug. It is so easy to have that happen.
Or like I did, write a script that assumes a certain environment variable is set outside the script... and then forget to set the variable before running it!
To prevent these problems, use "set -u" at the top of your bash scripts. This will halt the script instead of silently inserting an empty string if you use an undefined variable.
"set -e" (halt on nonzero return code) and "set -o pipefail" (propagate error returns through a pipe) are also useful options, or combine them with:
Here's a great article that describes these options and some tips for using them:http://redsymbol.net/articles/unofficial-bash-strict-mode/
PunchTornado|10 years ago
it was a hoax. a troll. not very far away from screaming bomb on an train.
rcurry|10 years ago
Every once in a while, at one job or another, someone will suggest we name a source code folder "core" and I get to relate that story all over again.
wildmusings|10 years ago
What happened next? This cliffhanger is killing me.
cookiecaper|10 years ago
Stack Exchange could improve their guidance and closure templates to help curb the habit of closing useful stuff all the time, so part of it is an identity issue that SE sites have within themselves, but it's compounded and exacerbated by a lot of fresh faces looking for a reason to stop the discussion so they can click their brand-new "lock thread" button.
mediumdeviation|10 years ago
The problem with this narrative is that it is almost never substantiated. So instead, let me posit an alternative hypothesis, as someone who has gotten his hands dirty on the various Meta sites:
The reason most people feel that SE has a moderation problem is because the moderation process on SE is significantly more transparent than almost any sites out there. And because of this transparency, people find it easier to point blame at these users.
The transparency part I hope is obvious - when a post get moderated on other sites, the full edit history and name of the moderators involved are almost never revealed. The close reasons are in general decided upon by the users themselves. Individual moderation decisions can be contested and debated on the Meta sites, and there are checks on almost every level.
In other words, the moderation process is already fairer than most other sites, where the moderation process is essentially a black box with no means of appeal. But people don't like it because the content which elsewhere would have been swept quietly under the rug is still visible and indexable.
brador|10 years ago
It's origin should not matter.
andrelaszlo|10 years ago
Now it has also been merged with this question. The helpful replies are still there, but the incentive to use the Stack Exchange sites for other purposes is reduced. I think this was a nice solution in this case.
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]
Fiahil|10 years ago
Can't we just ban every online buzz outlet from talking about programming, hardware or computers until they actually understand what they are talking about? I know what I'm asking is beyond impossible, but I'm really annoyed by the amount of buzz-impinged-naiveté blossoming everywhere each time someone makes headlines of something IT related.
TeMPOraL|10 years ago
RubyPinch|10 years ago
andrelaszlo|10 years ago
http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Bourne-Into-Oblivion
jmiserez|10 years ago
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/recovery.html
HN discussion:
Unix Recovery Legend (1986): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10160417 (143 points, 228 days ago, 60 comments)
JoeAltmaier|10 years ago
mpdehaan2|10 years ago
I wrote Ansible, but no longer work on it.
There are numerous problems with the hoax.
(A) the user skipped --no-preserve-root to the command, if he really wanted to delete /, he would need to try harder on a modern distro, because the rm command would stop the attempt (B) ansible by default fails on undefined variables, meaning it would never execute the command (C) Jinja template variables are actually {{foo}} not {foo}, so {foo} in bash prints a literal foo
So this triply couldn't happen. Finally, most people should probably be using the file module to delete files, though if people want to call out to the shell they can with any config tool.
I hate this was even posted because it reflects poorly on me and was in exceptionally bad taste to imply ansible would let it happen.
But can you shoot yourself in the foot with any config tool? If you want to, yes. Can you be bitten by a bug? Yes. Do tool authors make mistakes? Yes.
But it was a mean thing to do, and it's not something the tool would even allow, and it hurts when tech journalists (arguably some of the worst reporters in existance) blindly parrot the article without fake checking (just like they'll also do fake comparisons that just recycle blog posts).
vilhelm_s|10 years ago
[1] This was added in 2006, apparently: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/?id=af...
colejohnson66|10 years ago
Houshalter|10 years ago
Kiro|10 years ago
simula67|10 years ago
ymse|10 years ago
mioelnir|10 years ago
Question was then about recovery advice.
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]
funkysquid|10 years ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6y3HTYv...
phjesusthatguy3|10 years ago
tonyle|10 years ago
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9751207/how-can-i-use-got...
saulr|10 years ago
tim333|10 years ago
k__|10 years ago
How come that such user-generated-content communities always end like that?!
unknown|10 years ago
[deleted]