Comment Zone file encryption (Score 1) 1542
Several years ago, shortly after I'd been promoted from tech support to sys admin, and was still feeling nervous about it, I was editing the DNS zone file for the main domain at my work. I use vi, and I use ":x" to write/quit. Turns out, ":X" encrypts the file. Before I'd realized what I'd done, the file was encrypted with some random key composed of characters from whatever commands I was about to run, plus backspaces when I realized I was still in the file.
I had to reconstruct the file nearly from scratch (well, actually, just the comments, since we still had the slave zones - but the comments were very important), when it turned out the backups hadn't been working properly, either (a whole other can of worms, and my first major fix-it job as an admin). There were several old versions of the file lying around, which helped, too. The worst part was that I was the goddamn admin. I learned about not always typing at maximum speed that day.
Then, a friend/co-worker of mine deleted the public/private SSH key pair we used at the time to connect to all of our servers from our central admin box, trumping the Hell out of my mistake.
That one I had backed up, though.
I had to reconstruct the file nearly from scratch (well, actually, just the comments, since we still had the slave zones - but the comments were very important), when it turned out the backups hadn't been working properly, either (a whole other can of worms, and my first major fix-it job as an admin). There were several old versions of the file lying around, which helped, too. The worst part was that I was the goddamn admin. I learned about not always typing at maximum speed that day.
Then, a friend/co-worker of mine deleted the public/private SSH key pair we used at the time to connect to all of our servers from our central admin box, trumping the Hell out of my mistake.
That one I had backed up, though.
