Back in the olden days we used to nfs mount every other machines file system on every machine. I was root and ran "rm -rf /" instead of "./".

After I realized that it was taking too long, i realized my error.

Now for the fun part. In those days nfs passed root privileges to the remote file system. I took out 2.5 machines before I killed it.

At one of my prior positions they outsourced all the junior engineers to this firm that only had windows desktop support experience.

Actual escalation I got:

contractor: I am trying to remove this file that is filling the drive but it won't let me

me: show me what you are doing.

contractor (screenshot): # rm -f /dev/hdc

another one did rm -rf /var to clear a stuck log file, which at least did solve the problem he was having.

After that I sent out an email stating that I would not help anyone who used he rm command unless they consulted with a senior first. I was later reprimanded for saying I wouldn't help people.

Yep. I fucked up once when I meant to type chmod for something but with "./" but I missed the ".". It was not good.

It's my computer, I'll read and write what I want

Yeah, there is only one of you.

Gooble gobble

ed

G T F O !

-nano4lifegang

There are many people who appreciate a double bang.

I mean if you double bang me I'm likely to do whatever you want, too.

You restore the system from backup

If you are lucky your system is atomic or has other roll back feature. Otherwise it's reinstall time.

I guess you could set up a fresh system, run a script that goes through each folder checking the permission and setting it on the target system.

I think they had to reinstall. It was part of a Hadoop cluster and that was extra finicky.

I felt kinda bad doing that at first. then your absolute rage made my doubt's melt away.

Anger, rage and ultimately hate

These are the emotions we feel sometimes

Why memorize a different command? I assume sudoedit just looks up the system’s EDITOR environment variable and uses that. Is there any other benefit?

I don't use it, but, sudoedit is a little more complicated than that.

::: spoiler details from man sudo:

When invoked as sudoedit, the -e option (described below), is implied.

       -e, --edit
               Edit one or more files instead of running a command.   In  lieu
               of  a  path name, the string "sudoedit" is used when consulting
               the security policy.  If the user is authorized by the  policy,
               the following steps are taken:

               1.   Temporary  copies  are made of the files to be edited with
                    the owner set to the invoking user.

               2.   The editor specified by the policy is run to edit the tem‐
                    porary files.  The sudoers policy  uses  the  SUDO_EDITOR,
                    VISUAL  and  EDITOR environment variables (in that order).
                    If none of SUDO_EDITOR, VISUAL  or  EDITOR  are  set,  the
                    first  program  listed  in the editor sudoers(5) option is
                    used.

               3.   If they have been modified, the temporary files are copied
                    back to their original location and the temporary versions
                    are removed.

               To help prevent the editing of unauthorized files, the  follow‐
               ing  restrictions are enforced unless explicitly allowed by the
               security policy:

                •  Symbolic links  may  not  be  edited  (version  1.8.15  and
                   higher).

                •  Symbolic links along the path to be edited are not followed
                   when  the parent directory is writable by the invoking user
                   unless that user is root (version 1.8.16 and higher).

                •  Files located in a directory that is writable by the invok‐
                   ing user may not be edited unless that user is  root  (ver‐
                   sion 1.8.16 and higher).

               Users are never allowed to edit device special files.

               If  the specified file does not exist, it will be created.  Un‐
               like most commands run by sudo, the editor is run with the  in‐
               voking  user's  environment  unmodified.  If the temporary file
               becomes empty after editing, the user will be  prompted  before
               it is installed.  If, for some reason, sudo is unable to update
               a file with its edited version, the user will receive a warning
               and the edited copy will remain in a temporary file.

:::

tldr: it makes a copy of the file-to-be-edited in a temp directory, owned by you, and then runs your $EDITOR as your normal user (so, with your normal editor config)

note that sudo also includes a similar command which is specifically for editing /etc/sudoers, called visudo 🤪

It doesn't edit the file directly, it creates a temp file that replaces the file when saving. It means that the editor is run as the user, not as root.

I know this is a meme community, but a modicum of effort IS warranted IMO. https://superuser.com/questions/785187/sudoedit-why-use-it-over-sudo-vi is the top result of a search for "why use sudoedit" and a pretty good answer. "man sudoedit" also explains it pretty well, as shown by another commenter.

From the arch wiki

sudo -e {file}

Set SUDO_EDITOR in your profile to the editor of your choice, benefit is it retains your user profile for that editor, it's also less to type. For stuff like editing sudoers you're supposed to use visudo to edit that. Others can probably give better/more thorough reasons to consider it.

Correct but it uses the SUDO_EDITOR environment variable. The benefit is more security while editing system files, it creates a temporary file and when you finish it writes changes to the original. There is more to it but that is all I know, it prevents some exploits.

I believe sudoedit disables being able to spawn commands from the editor. In vi, I think it was :!<command>

Torvalds would like to have a word with you

When you run a process under sudo, it will be running as the root user. Processes that that process launches will also be running as the root user; new processes run as the same user as their parent process.

So internally, no, it won't result in another invocation of sudo. But those processes a dolphin process running as root starts will be running as the root user, same as if you had individually invoked them via sudo.

Not willing to die over this comment. Hear me out for a second. I recognize how powerful vi (is it neovim these days?) is. But I could never play games with those awful hjkl keys for navigation, I hate them. Also, I don't have to memorize nano. All the key combos are listed on the bottom. So it requires less mental load.

Some guys at my company actually do ;)

We have nano on our servers, but not vim

Great one. Many thanks!

LOL, gtfo with that nonsense!

Thanks for the explanation!

Right, phew, I was kind of worried I should have been editing more of these but I suppose it’s mostly just as I add certain software or features

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I hadn't heard of sudoedit before but that makes a lot of sense.