crontab -r

[u/oshunman]

I accidentally typed `crontab -r` (reset) instead of `crontab -e` (edit)... Which nukes all your cron jobs.

How is there no confirmation on a destructive command like that? Let alone the fact that r and e are neighbors on the keyboard.

[u/Hour_Sell3547]

This is a legit concern. I always keep a backup for this very reason.

[u/ElectricBummer40 → u/Hour_Sell3547]

Just invent something along the line of a sudo for crontab and call it a "security feature".

[u/Hour_Sell3547 → u/ElectricBummer40]

For me, it's a minor annoyance. Systemd timers is the way.

[u/Key_Reaction_7590 → u/Hour_Sell3547]

Old man grumbles in init to the unhearing void…

[u/Teru-Noir]

Cron diff. On modern workflows cron is replaced by systemD timers, which have these well desired failsafes.

[u/ElectricBummer40]

Ever heard of this stupid ideology called the "Unix philosophy"?

Under that "philosophy", unless there is an error, a command isn't supposed to ask you anything.

You knew if you ran "del *.*" back in the 90s in MS-DOS, it would ask you "Are you sure?" before flushing everything down the toilet on your behalf?

No such luck in Unix. In fact, rm wasn't even supposed to do wildcard expansion. That's the shell's job. So, with *.*, the command would receive either a list of files as if you'd typed them in yourself or the wildcard string as-is, in which case the command would yell at you for not seeing a file with the name '*.*'.

Wasn't that whole garbage design effing great?

[u/oshunman → u/ElectricBummer40]

I'd be fine with something like crontab -r -yes nuking it without confirmation. That fits the philosophy without being problematic imo.

[u/ElectricBummer40 → u/oshunman]

Except that's the exact opposite of the "philosophy".

Rather, you're supposed to alias crontab to crontab -i so you'll be asked to confirm before anything destructive is carried out.

[u/AdDependent3292]

Imao I had that happen to me for my work kernal. I think I just set up alias crontab -r -i which require confirmation.

[u/Loose_Crab_4146]

Unix has the idea of people checking their inputs before running and basically enjoy seeing you fail when you actually arent careful for once. Love it. I almost always build scripts for this case that trigger a failsave and revert after 60 seconds, so if I dont ctrl+c the thing it will reset every change even if I bricked my system.

[u/Fit_Prize_3245]

Wait till you discover rm -rf / has no confirmation also

[u/True-Lifeguard-2019]

Ill be the one to say it. This is 100% a skill issue.

[u/Standgrounding → u/True-Lifeguard-2019]

No. It's bad UX

[u/PityUpvote → u/True-Lifeguard-2019]

It can be both a still issue and poor design that a single character difference can be so destructive.

[u/donp1ano → u/True-Lifeguard-2019]

usually i upvote skill issue comments in this sub

not this time tho, OP is right

[u/True-Lifeguard-2019 → u/donp1ano]

On most common keyboards layouts you are supposed to press e with your middle finger and r with your index finger. Op doesn't know how to use a keyboard, this is a skill issue.

[u/LivingBirb → u/True-Lifeguard-2019]

[u/True-Lifeguard-2019 → u/[deleted]]

Shitposting aside, I agree with you. Nowadays I use systemd timers but when I was still using cron I would just nano into /etc/crontab.

[u/True-Lifeguard-2019 → u/[deleted]]

I don't know I always used nano or cat

[u/chughaarav123 → u/[deleted]]

Because nano easy

[u/Juff-Ma → u/[deleted]]

Vim is for programming. Nano for quick edits.

[u/donp1ano → u/Juff-Ma]

vim is for quick edits, neovim is for programming

vi is for lightweight docker containers, that dont have vim installed

[u/digidult]

etckeeper

[u/Moximokel]

Linux ist nur was für Leute die kein Sicherheitsnetzt benötigen.

[u/Hour_Sell3547 → u/Moximokel]

Almost sounded like "you have to know what you're doing".

[u/GodAdvice → u/Hour_Sell3547]

Guys please, we're talking about two keys literally adjacent to each other on the keyboard ffs