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Steam For Linux Bug Wipes Out All of a User's Files

Posted by Soulskill on from the big-oops dept.

An anonymous reader sends a report of a bug in Steam's Linux client that will accidentally wipe all of a user's files if they move their Steam folder. According to the bug report: I launched steam. It did not launch, it offered to let me browse, and still could not find it when I pointed to the new location. Steam crashed. I restarted it. It re-installed itself and everything looked great. Until I looked and saw that steam had apparently deleted everything owned by my user recursively from the root directory. Including my 3tb external drive I back everything up to that was mounted under /media. Another user reported a similar problem — losing his home directory — and problems with the script were found: at some point, the Steam script sets $STEAMROOT as the directory containing all Steam's data, then runs rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"* later on. If Steam has been moved, $STEAMROOT returns as empty, resulting in rm -rf "/"* which causes the unexpected deletion.

10 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. And that people... by omfg-no · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is why you have backups. You need to apply the rule Total Backups = Total Backups -1 so if you have 1 you have 0.

    1. Re:And that people... by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And also, why redundancy is not backup. If your backup is plugged in and/or mounted, it's not a backup any more.

    2. Re:And that people... by MetalliQaZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      so if you have 1 you have 0.

      Dude, what does that even mean? Backups have to be done intelligently based on your situation. In the summary, the user had an external hard disk on USB which would have protected against primary HD failure, but not against common mode failures such as a fire at home or a compromised PC. He didn't protect himself against malicious code, and got burned. The raw number of backups don't matter if you're not paying attention to what you are and are not protecting against.

      --
      "Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
    3. Re:And that people... by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Did you read the part where it also erased his backups?

      I think the moral here is, don't leave your backup drive plugged in when you're not running backups.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    4. Re:And that people... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They can be plugged in but not mounted. in such a case, rm -rf / won't touch them. Only mount the disk when doing a backup, then unmount it again, problem solved.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  2. Re:I hope no one runs steam as root. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who cares about root! My home directory is WAY more important than the system.

  3. Re:When I see that [literaly] textbook mistake.... by TomTraynor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yep, but, they should test to see if the variable has a value. I remember vaguely that I tested for something like that by appending a value to the end saving it to a new variable and then testing both the original and new and if the same it was null.

    --
    Panic now, beat the rush!
  4. Re:When I see that [literaly] textbook mistake.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    if [ -z "$STEAMROOT" ] ; then echo 'you fucking idiot what are you doing'; fi

  5. Re:arguably steam isnt for linux. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aside from areas where it's legally unavoidable(medical devices, avionics, probably some nuclear applications), applications that take the slightest responsibility for their actions are virtually unheard of, under any license. On a good day, a proprietary application might accept liability up to the value of a refund; but not further, if it fucks up really egregiously; but that's about the extent of it.

    You can get software that promises more; but it will cost you mightily.

  6. Re:When I see that [literaly] textbook mistake.... by ejasons · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OSX sandboxed apps cannot look outside of their own directories. However, when the user chooses a file via the "Open" dialog, the application is given a handle that allows it to open just that particular file. Sandboxing really is the solution to this kind of mess...