wa8ycd@skvax1.csc.ti.com (05/10/91)
Hi Y'all,
This should probably be posted in comp.unix.really.stupid, but I
don't know how to get to that newsgroup. :-)
We have just put in some Sun SparcStation IPCs (and a Sparcstation 2 with
lotsa hard disk) and I was goofing around the other day and broke one of the
IPCs.
(1) I was logged in as root which was probably my first mistake, and
(2) I was moving (attempting to...) all the files in one sub-directory
up one level. Here's how I (tried to...) did it:
% cd /usr/mydir
% ls
mysubdir
% ls mysubdir
file1 file2 file3 file4
% mv mysubdir/* ../mydir
WHAM!
This is where the node stopped working.
I admit to being dangerously ignorant about the way unix commands work,
but coming from a DOS environment, I guess I am worse off because of making
assumptions I shouldn't about what ".." means.
Could some kind guru explain to me (in monosyllables, please!) what I did?
I've tried asking around here, and looking through several volumes of books and
have not found an answer. [[at least, not one I am comfortable with!]]
SYMPTOM: /bin seemed to be clobbered. It showed up as a "bad directory"
when we tried to "cd" to it. "ls" and other commands were not
available since /bin was not valid.
Thanks,
Bob West WA8YCD
Texas Instruments Inc.
DSEG Human Resource Development
Dallas TX
(214) 917-1908
rlwest@flopn2.csc.ti.combharat@computing-maths.cardiff.ac.uk (Bharat Mediratta) (05/11/91)
In article <1991May9.121406.49@skvax1.csc.ti.com> wa8ycd@skvax1.csc.ti.com writes: >Hi Y'all, > (1) I was logged in as root which was probably my first mistake, and > (2) I was moving (attempting to...) all the files in one sub-directory > up one level. Here's how I (tried to...) did it: > > % cd /usr/mydir > % ls > mysubdir > % ls mysubdir > file1 file2 file3 file4 > % mv mysubdir/* ../mydir > [stuff deleted] > Could some kind guru explain to me (in monosyllables, please!) what I did? Well, from a syntax point of fiew, you didn't do much wrong. The '*' in the move command will match all the files that don't begin with a '.'. Therefore what you should have wound up with was: % ls file1 file2 file3 file4 mysubdir % > SYMPTOM: /bin seemed to be clobbered. It showed up as a "bad directory" > when we tried to "cd" to it. "ls" and other commands were not > available since /bin was not valid. Okay. So if you moved things from a directory called /usr/mydir/subdir to /usr/mydir then the problem's probably not due to what you were doing immediately when it crashed. However, if you moved something like /usr/kvm or /usr/adm around... -- | Bharat Mediratta | JANET: bharat@cm.cf.ac.uk | +--------------------+ UUNET: bharat%cm.cf.ac.uk%cunyvm.cuny.edu@uunet.uucp | |On a clear disk... | uk.co: bharat%cm.cf.ac.uk%cunyvm.cuny.edu%uunet.uucp@ukc| |you can seek forever| UUCP: ...!uunet!cunym.cuny.edu!cm.cf.ac.uk!bharat |