mj@myrias.UUCP (06/05/87)
I have a nice mthod for a spectacular crash of Gulam.prg (a version
posted to the net). It is not that I want to brag about it, but you
may do it by a mistake nad have a nasty surprise.
WARNING! Try it only on RAM drive or scratch floppy, since the only
method of recovery will be to de-install RAM drive, or reformat your
disk!!!!
Try the following sequence of commands:
mkdir testd
mkdir testd\expmd
ls -l >testd\dirf # this for better effect
cp testd\* testd\expmd
Now lean back and watch effects. There is nothing, short of resetting
your computer, that you can do anyway. (It will create a recursive
structure of subdirectories which you cannot remove, since rm command
does not have either -r or -f option. GEM will also barf on you after
a short while, coming with nonsense error messages).
I believe that this bug is closely related to 'rm *', mentioned by
John Turner.
Michal Jaegermann
Myrias Research Corporation
Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
...{ihnp4, ubc-vision}!alberta!myrias!mjbammi@cwruecmp.UUCP (06/08/87)
In article <505@myrias.UUCP> mj@myrias.UUCP (Michal Jaegermann) writes: ............... >mkdir testd >mkdir testd\expmd >ls -l >testd\dirf # this for better effect >cp testd\* testd\expmd > >Now lean back and watch effects. There is nothing, short of resetting >your computer, that you can do anyway. (It will create a recursive >structure of subdirectories which you cannot remove, since rm command >does not have either -r or -f option. GEM will also barf on you after >a short while, coming with nonsense error messages). > I believe that this bug is closely related to 'rm *', mentioned by >John Turner. > From my perspective the answer is Yes and No. Let me try and explain. In Gulam the filename regular expressions are UNIX style filename regular expressions and NOT Gemdos style regular expressions. So a '*' matches all files in $cwd. Therefore 'whatever *' will also match the names of all subdirectories in $cwd. In newer versions of Gulam, one of the things that has been fixed is that rm and other commands that do not deal with directories will skip them if given directories as args (the command line expansion is done before it is known what command is going to use the args), instead of barfing at them. One of the features of the 'cp' command is that if it is given the name of a directory as the source arguement, then it will copy the entire directory to the destination (if the destination is also a directory). But your example is a good one, and shows up a problem in this scheme of things. It'll be interesting to see what solution Prabhaker come up with. -- usenet: {decvax,cbatt,cbosgd,sun}!cwruecmp!bammi jwahar r. bammi csnet: bammi@cwru.edu <---------Please note change of address arpa: bammi@cwru.edu <---------Please note change of address compuServe: 71515,155
mjd@icdoc.UUCP (06/12/87)
In article <505@myrias.UUCP> mj@myrias.UUCP (Michal Jaegermann) writes: > > I have a nice mthod for a spectacular crash of Gulam.prg (a version > >Now lean back and watch effects. There is nothing, short of resetting >your computer, that you can do anyway. (It will create a recursive >structure of subdirectories which you cannot remove, since rm command >does not have either -r or -f option. GEM will also barf on you after >a short while, coming with nonsense error messages). The fix to this is to use gem to move down to the bottom of the tree, and then to move up only 2 or 3 levels before attempting to delete the subtree from that point. Keep doing this until you have removed the entire structure. This worked OK on a hard disc, but make sure to beef up your 40-folder fix, and reboot to clear TOS's directory map first.