Why I Love Linux

Wed May 8 15:00:00 EDT 2002

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A&nbsp;couple of nights ago I was playing with my Linux From Scratch (LFS) build.
&nbsp;I'm building a boot disk for installing LFS on other systems. With the boot
disk's root file system incubating deep within my /home directory, my work
commenced. &nbsp;While residing in&nbsp; /home/&lt;blahblahblah&gt;/installdisk I discovered
<a href="http://www.busybox.net">BusyBox</a> (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.busybox.net">http://www.busybox.net</a>); a
nifty utility which allowed me to purge the boot disk's lib directory. &nbsp;Excited
about finally fitting the kernel and root fs on one disk, I began to type.
As root, from the&nbsp; /home/&lt;blahblahblah&gt;/installdisk, I typed rm -rf
/lib/*. &nbsp;Oops... I meant to type rm -rf lib/*. &nbsp;Unfortunately, I didn't hit
control-c fast enough. &nbsp;The /lib casualties were immense. &nbsp;Everything stopped
working. &nbsp;Couldn't ls, cd, su, or cp. &nbsp;Couldn't even shutdown with ctrl+alt+del;
I had to power off. 
&nbsp;&nbsp; 
Following a colorful commentary on the preceeding action and resultant situation,
I found peace. &nbsp;This is Linux, not Windows! I don't need to re-install and
sacrifice all my tweaks and mods. &nbsp; Armed with my trusty Slackware 8.0 install
CD, I started system CPR. &nbsp;From the install CD, I mounted the root partition,
copied the glibc package to the root partition, installed the package, unmounted
the root partition, removed the CD and rebooted. &nbsp;My system's pulse strengthened.
&nbsp;I repeated the process twice, re-installing the glibc++ and e2fs packages.
&nbsp;Upon the final reboot, login welcomed me with open arms and a login prompt.
&nbsp;X loaded succesfully, NVidia logo and all. &nbsp;My applications ran with the
same vigor as before my surprise attack. &nbsp;Then a lone, white dove soared
across my screen... 
 
... Ok, maybe a dove didn't fly across my screen. &nbsp;But my system came up
beautifully, as though I had never wiped out the core libraries that 99%
of the system relies on. &nbsp;Just imagine if I did this to c:\winnt\system32.
&nbsp;The moral is that it's OK to suffer from Windows-panic-itis when you make
a mistake as root. &nbsp;Just make sure you take a deep breath and remember you're
in Linux land now. &nbsp;For that which cripples Windows only stings Linux. &nbsp;Just
ensure a boot disk and the original install media is always close at hand. 
 
Robert Romito. 
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