Our Dumb Mistakes

Puppy related raves and general interest that doesn't fit anywhere else
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Ibidem
Posts: 549
Joined: Wed 26 May 2010, 03:31
Location: State of Jefferson

#46 Post by Ibidem »

puppyluvr wrote: As a teenager, while hunting deer with my younger step-brother Bobby, I witnessed him urinating on an electric cattle fence... :shock:
After the convulsions went away, and the screaming subsided, and I quit laughing enough to check, he seemed to be OK... :roll:
A saying I heard from my first college ag teacher:

"There are three kinds of people in the world:
Those who learn by reading,
Those who learn by seeing,
And those who just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

A little thing he mentioned: the wrong way to test an electric fence for current is with the inside of your fingers. Besides the shock itself, sometimes the current makes your hand curl closed around the wire. A trick that's sometimes helpful is to hold a blade of grass near and listen--if your ears are good enough! If you must use your hand, use the back.

Also, it's annoying to have a mower that won't turn off when you release the handle: there's a small jolt when you disconnect the spark plug to stop it.

But my biggest oops was the time I drove through a "puddle", on the downhill side. I thought it looked reasonable to cross, as I always had managed to do so previously--until my car stopped 1/3 of the way across. Wading across a hundred feet of knee deep puddle is not fun; less so when it's in pouring rain an hour before finals...
(Nothing like a jumpstart and starter fluid in the air intake to get it started again!)

akash_rawal
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed 25 Aug 2010, 15:38
Location: ISM Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India

#47 Post by akash_rawal »

I felt really helpless when I committed the mistake of mounting all drives in /tmp, forgetting to unmount them and shutting down the system.

I was wondering, why was puppy taking so much time to shut down :?

Next boot discovered that none of the linuxes were bootable.

Had to buy a new CD to run puppy and discovered that all my linux partitions were empty.

From that day I never mount anything under /tmp.

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Flash
Official Dog Handler
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Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 16:04
Location: Arizona USA

#48 Post by Flash »

Why did mounting the partitions under /tmp cause them to disappear when you shut the computer down? If you'd simply unplugged the computer, rather than shutting it down in software, do you think the same thing would have happened?

akash_rawal
Posts: 229
Joined: Wed 25 Aug 2010, 15:38
Location: ISM Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India

#49 Post by akash_rawal »

Flash wrote:Why did mounting the partitions under /tmp cause them to disappear when you shut the computer down? If you'd simply unplugged the computer, rather than shutting it down in software, do you think the same thing would have happened?
I think all files in /tmp are deleted one by one while shutting down.

Strangely only linux partitions were emptied, my data on ntfs partitions were intact so I was able to recover the system.

In this case it seemed safer to cut off power supply than shutting down the computer. :lol:

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rcrsn51
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Joined: Tue 05 Sep 2006, 13:50
Location: Stratford, Ontario

#50 Post by rcrsn51 »

akash_rawal wrote:I think all files in /tmp are deleted one by one while shutting down.
I once made the same mistake by mounting a digital camera's memory on /tmp, then shutting down Puppy while the camera was still turned on.

I couldn't figure out why all my pictures were disappearing.

Sylvander
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Joined: Mon 15 Dec 2008, 11:06
Location: West Lothian, Scotland, UK

#51 Post by Sylvander »

If you try to copy [e.g. something huge?] to a "partition_file_system that is NOT mounted....
The Puppy will copy instead to /tmp...
And during the session, at the next auto-save [or manual save]...
The pupsave file will now hold/store that "thing" [in the latest version of /tmp]...
And so the available space in the "personal storage" will begin to diminish...
Until things return to normal at reboot->[because the contents of /tmp have been deleted].

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Galbi
Posts: 1098
Joined: Wed 21 Sep 2011, 22:32
Location: Bs.As. - Argentina.

#52 Post by Galbi »

Just to avoid situations like Prehistoric had I prefer to ask 'silly' question to confirm I understood right. But people (bah, mostly my wife) complains for asking nonsense.
Even I feel like an idiot, it's better to spent ten seconds in a stupid question than hours of work (or worse, money).

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Ted Dog
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Joined: Wed 14 Sep 2005, 02:35
Location: Heart of Texas

#53 Post by Ted Dog »

puppyluvr wrote::...my younger step-brother Bobby, I witnessed him urinating on an electric cattle fence... :shock:
After the convulsions went away, and the screaming subsided, and I quit laughing enough to check, he seemed to be OK... :roll:
He He, Joined 4H as a city kid just to be near the 'cowgirl of my dreams' Part of the introduction hazing was peeing on the electric fence, I fail for it. Was complaining to my Dad (former farm kid) about my issue with mean farm boys, he was laughing so hard on my lack of knowledge before I could finish my story, he left the road a few times.
Well my dream cowgirl was not used to wearing a dress and forgot about that as she crawled over the backseat, that irritated my mom her 'being unlady like' :wink: on our way to the school dance.

linuxbear
Posts: 620
Joined: Sat 18 Apr 2009, 20:39
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

#54 Post by linuxbear »

puppyluvr wrote::.. electric cattle fence... :shock:

A long time ago I was riding my bicycle home on a wet path in the Bavarian alps. I was going too fast and did not make a curve. Bike went down and I went into the electric fence!

....Moral of the story? too many beers and bicycles do not mix!

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SFR
Posts: 1800
Joined: Wed 26 Oct 2011, 21:52

#55 Post by SFR »

I'd like to join the club with excellent and brilliant:

Code: Select all

a=''; rm -rf $a/*
"Hmm, let's see how 'rm' will interpret this" - I was thinking.
"I have frugal install, PUPMODE=13, nothing bad can happen anyways."

I just forgot about couple of things: /initrd and /mnt

Fortunately, thanks to quick CTRL+C and my "backup-mania", damages are minimal (well I hope, but only time will tell for sure), no medical assistance was needed this time. :wink:

Greetings!
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starhawk
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Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...

#56 Post by starhawk »

Just curious: what does that nifty command do, exactly?

(Og no code good!)

bark_bark_bark
Posts: 1885
Joined: Tue 05 Jun 2012, 12:17
Location: Wisconsin USA

#57 Post by bark_bark_bark »

when i was 4/5, I rode my scooter down a hill really fast. When I tried to stop I slammed my face in to the side of parked pick-up truck. My face had been badly scraped and it was bleeding.

I also when I was 5, fell down the stairs and broke my colarbone.

At that time I never payed attention to where I was going, and I was very clumsy.
....

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SFR
Posts: 1800
Joined: Wed 26 Oct 2011, 21:52

#58 Post by SFR »

starhawk wrote:Just curious: what does that nifty command do, exactly?

(Og no code good!)
Deletes EVERYTHING. :!:

EDIT:
Basically, if the "a" variable wasn't null, but e.g.:

Code: Select all

a=/tmp; rm -rf $a/*
only /tmp would suffer.
However the idea itself to mix 'rm -rf' with '/*' is the height of folly...
...that's why I'm here. :wink:

BTW: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... 0-rf%20%2F

Greetings!
[color=red][size=75][O]bdurate [R]ules [D]estroy [E]nthusiastic [R]ebels => [C]reative [H]umans [A]lways [O]pen [S]ource[/size][/color]
[b][color=green]Omnia mea mecum porto.[/color][/b]

linuxbear
Posts: 620
Joined: Sat 18 Apr 2009, 20:39
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

#59 Post by linuxbear »

What's wrong with "rm"? rm -rf /windows is goodness :wink:

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Karl Godt
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Joined: Sun 20 Jun 2010, 13:52
Location: Kiel,Germany

#60 Post by Karl Godt »

Another one :

Code: Select all

cp /mnt/whatever /dev/whatever
is like dd ing to /dev/whatever

I once accidentially rm -rf a Xubuntu partition .
Considering that not as a mistake ..

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puppyluvr
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Joined: Sun 06 Jan 2008, 23:14
Location: Chickasha Oklahoma
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#61 Post by puppyluvr »

:D Hello,
Variable=everything. Remove variable, recursive.

A linux virus?
Lol.

rm -rf /*

is not funny in any context.
:D
Its like "He who should not be typed"
Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
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starhawk
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#62 Post by starhawk »

This is the front panel from a Neoware CA19 thin client that I've been modifying... I'm trying to pull a My Fair Lady sorta thing and make it into a more standard desktop. (Front Panel = the circuit board with the lights, switches, and sometimes ports on the front of your PC.)

Look at the two USB ports. One of these things is not like the other, and that's why I'm putting this here. I have NO idea how it happened, either -- after all, I don't drink... :P

Image

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jakobcornelis
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue 06 Nov 2007, 15:37
Location: Elliot Lake, Ontario

#63 Post by jakobcornelis »

greengeek wrote:So many times I've saved files to sda2 or sdc2 (whatever) and never been able to find them again because I had not mounted the destination partition first...
OK, but why do I get stuff on the ROX display of an unmounted sda5 that's not on the mounted sda5. Maybe that's where your stuff is (No! Not on my sda5, on your sda2, or whatever).

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NickAu
Posts: 183
Joined: Mon 30 Dec 2013, 04:32
Location: Far North Coast NSW ɹÇ￾punuÊ￾op

#64 Post by NickAu »

I once was messing around on Windows and was playing with the zone alarm firewall and Locked it down. No traffic in or out. Cost me $ 100 dollars for a Pc tech to come to my place and click 3 buttons and it was back to normal.

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ardvark
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Joined: Tue 02 Jul 2013, 03:43
Location: USA

#65 Post by ardvark »

NickAu wrote:Cost me $ 100 dollars for a Pc tech to come to my place and click 3 buttons and it was back to normal.
Oh, wow! For something like that, I would usually do it for free, sometimes five or ten dollars at most. :shock:

One of my worst was a Windows reinstall for a customer who had contracted a virus (my very first job for a customer back in 2001.) It was one of those that can survive the typical reformat and reinstall. I didn't think to wipe the partition and it came back after I left. :oops:

Regards...
Last edited by ardvark on Thu 06 Feb 2014, 07:45, edited 2 times in total.

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