response 27 of 194:

Oct 5 17:52 UTC 1997

Thanks, Marcus!

response 29 of 194:

Oct 5 18:13 UTC 1997

 Thanks, Marcus. You never cease to amaze me. 
<omni bows>

response 31 of 194:

Oct 5 18:17 UTC 1997

Yes, thanks Marcus!

response 33 of 194:

Oct 5 22:29 UTC 1997

        Well, gues I said it in #1 also, thanks Marcus and all who
helped, including he one(s) that made sure Marcus got feed every
now and then.

response 35 of 194:

Oct 6 00:39 UTC 1997

You mean regular backups?  Yes, we are going to start that again. ;)

response 37 of 194:

Oct 6 01:03 UTC 1997

So the inode tables had all gone bye-bye?

response 39 of 194:

Oct 6 01:21 UTC 1997

        Is there a discussion for when the regualar back-up will 
take place, like at 4am, when the local use of Grex, is usually 
low?   I take this can be automated.  Just hope someone can 
switch tapes when they visit the Pumpkin.
        I would suggest an A, B & C tape set.  And a nearby log for
when someone switches the tape.  I'm not suggesting daily visits
to Pumpkin, just a routine for switching tapes when someone stops
by and a visual record so that tapes are not switched twice in
one day.

response 41 of 194:

Oct 6 04:59 UTC 1997

 Is there any way we can get the Pope to forget about canonizing Mother
Theresa and maybe canonizing Marcus instead? 

 Restoring a file like that, in as many pieces as that, in my eyes is nothing
short of a miracle.

response 43 of 194:

Oct 6 15:12 UTC 1997

Thanks to Marcus!  Me thinks that "staffer x", whoever deleted those
files, owes Marcus a beer, or lunch or something.

Isnt there built in security prompts to safeguard against this sort of
thing happening?  I mean shouldnt the staffer in question have been
prompted by grex not once, but  at least twice...

"you are about to delete the /etc files!! are you SURE you want to
proceed?"  (y/n)


More sophisiticated setups would even require concurrence from another
staffer before such files could be deleted.

In short, if it was that easy to delete such important files, shouldnt
security measures be taken?

response 45 of 194:

Oct 6 22:13 UTC 1997

        That's why you automate the process. Have it come in and do 
it's work at 4 in the morning.

response 47 of 194:

Oct 7 00:58 UTC 1997

The problem with such prompts is that there are many, many, many important
files spread out all over the system.  There are circumstances where deleting
various important system files is appropriate, and what is a very important
system file depends somewhat on the context.  If we build in lots of
safeguards like that, and then say that it's ok to go wild with the rm command
because if there's anything important it will prompt you, we are going to get
into trouble when we forget to protect some important system file in that way,
or when so much is protected that people will both depend on the protection
and learn to ignore it.  It is far better for us to do regular backups, and
to be very careful when deleting things as root.

The staffer who slipped up here normally is very careful, but in this case
he made a typo and deleted the wrong file.  No matter how careful people are,
mistakes happen.  We can try to minimize them, but backups are still quite
important.

response 49 of 194:

Oct 7 16:33 UTC 1997

Hi, yamuda, welcome to Grex.  It gets easier ...