What goes wrong repeatedly.
RUNNING EVERYTHING AS ROOT
No safety net, and no record of who did what.
RECURSIVE DELETION WITH AN UNCHECKED PATH
The command that has destroyed the most servers.
SETTING PERMISSIONS TO FULLY OPEN
Making a problem disappear by removing all protection.
EDITING CONFIGURATION WITHOUT A BACKUP
No route back when the service will not start.
RESTARTING A SERVICE WITHOUT TESTING THE CONFIGURATION
Taking every site down for a typo.
RUNNING LONG TASKS IN A SESSION THAT CAN DROP
An interrupted upgrade, and a machine that will not boot.
EXTRACTING ARCHIVES AS ROOT INSIDE AN ACCOUNT
Files the account cannot write, and a site that stops working.
DISCARDING ALL OUTPUT FROM CRON
Failures nobody sees for months.
IGNORING A CHANGED SSH FINGERPRINT
Dismissing the one warning that indicates interception.
ASSUMING SPACE IS THE ONLY LIMIT
Inodes exhausted while gigabytes remain free.
NOT CHECKING WHICH MACHINE YOU ARE ON
The single most expensive mistake available.
TRUSTING COMMANDS COPIED FROM THE INTERNET
Running something you have not read.
LEAVING A ROOT SHELL OPEN AND UNATTENDED
DISABLING THE FIREWALL TO MAKE SOMETHING WORK
And never enabling it again.
NEVER TESTING A RESTORE
Discovering the backup is unusable at the worst moment.
WHAT ALL OF THESE SHARE
They are avoidable by slowing down for thirty seconds.
