Yup, and as I said to the other people who said that very sane thing "you are right, and I was likely wrong about using rsync. This was 20 years ago and I probably didn't know how to use rsync yet."

I believe they were looking for old versions of some files, possibly from directories they never asked to be rsynced.

And, again, 20 years ago. I have definitely learned my lessons AGES since then (:

As I've mentioned, this was about 20 years ago, so I can't really remember it 100%.

However, this was one of those shops that started with about 10 employees, and even though by then it was 200+, it still operated as if it was a small, small company. The head devs were part of the original 10, and they were like gods. They had full access to EVERYTHING. Including root access to all the servers. They were basically allowed to do whatever they wanted.

If something went wrong where they and someone else was involved, it was never their fault.

*laughs*

This was 20 years ago, and in a company that still thought it was very small even though it was medium-sized. The devs ere gods. They outranked me in every way and had root access to all my servers.

You know the old saying, "make something idiot-proof and someone will come up with a better idiot."

They'd have plugged it back in. Again, the guy physically went into the server room and pushed a button.

I certainly should've disabled the cron job or, better yet (as pointed out by AC down there) have known what rsync actually was and used that - I know I said I did in the original post but in retrospect I couldn't have as it wouldn't have overwritten everything. This was about 20 years ago...

They weren't supposed to, but the head developers were like gods at that place. They had the root passowrds and I wasn't allowed to restrict them in any way.

It stemmed from them being among the original 10 people when the company started, and even though the place was now a 200+ employee organisation, in some ways they still ran it like 10-person operation.

I did vocally complain about this. They quite often went in and overrode stuff I did.

Good call... this was about 20 years ago, and it's not likely that I used rsync (not sure I knew how to do that back then).

My memories of the event are not... perfect. But it's likely that I just used scp to dump entire directories. Couldn't have been using rsync because, as you say, it wouldn't have one as much damage.

I don't know what monetary cost they assigned to this, but this is the one I got in the most trouble for.

Frankly, it was something I got blamed for. I guess I can take partial responsibility. You guys tell me.

I was the only UNIX guy at this place. We were moving our Main Internal Server to a newer machine. I had set up a cron job to rsync all user data nightly, so that when we transition over the rsync would be faster.

So, the big day comes. I come in on a weekend, do the final rsync, change some DNS entries, shut down old machine, bring new machine up. No problem.

Next day everyone is working happily, everything is working smoothly, no worries.

Or so I thought. Turns out the main developer wanted something off the old server, so he turned it back on to copy his files... and then left it up.

So, during the night, the thing automatically rsyncs and overwrites an entire day's work for about 80 people.

Definitely partially my fault for not disabling the cron job, but I was the only one who got in any kind of trouble at all for this (to the extent of almost losing my job, and frankly that was the catalyst for me leaving that place).

> Carly would probably lay off Congress

See, that I could actually get behind.

How is it lesbian sex when one of them is a man?

I think you should run.

Seriously, can't do any worse, right?

I hope you brought something to read, because you'll be waiting a loooooong time.

That photo conveys so much. Look at it. That's all 100% real. That woman is actually in space! If you don't think that's epic, I mean if that's just "mildly interesting" to you, I think maybe you need to turn in your geek card (:

I tried to read his Mars Trilogy. As far as I'm concerned the "science" in it is "Political Science".

One thing I "hate" about my PC is that I can't really carry it around with me. My Android phone fixes that quite well.

I don't know how old you are, Anonymous Coward, and I don't think you (or hardly anyone else) will read this, and I hate to pull a Back In My Day, but when I was a teenager and "computers" were these things only us nerds had, we used to dream about someday having a whole personal computer that would fit in your pocket. Or, or, small pouch or something. We thought it'd be the size of a pocketbook or something, with a chorded keyboard on a wire. Oh and in our most fevered dreams we thought maybe this mythical device would be connected to a Global Network of some kind that contained the sum total of Human Knowledge.

And now WE HAVE IT. Dude, we may not have got flying cars but we sure as hell got our handheld portable computer. I don't think anyone thought it'd grow out of a friggin PHONE, but I am not complaining.