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UK Hosting Provider 123-Reg Accidentally Deletes Customer Sites (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the blame-the-rogue-certificate dept.

Richard Chirgwin, writing for The Register: UK hosting and domains provider 123-Reg has been struck by a weekend issue that knocked an unspecified number of VPS customers offline. The company posted a status message saying that the unspecified issues arose on April 16. 123-reg customer, software company INNmaster, contacted The Register directing our attention to its post on the topic, claiming a rogue script had deleted customer sites (such as this one). Slashdot has independently received several tips for this incident. Here's a copy of the email that Richard Winslow, Director of 123-Reg sent to the affected customers.

5 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. So that Serverfault question wasn't a hoax by hardill · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like that Serverfault question about running rm -rf / was real then

  2. Re:A hot I worked for did this once by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    so gave a sales person root access who promptly ran rm -rf /*.*.

    Running rm -rf /*.*. (or even rm -rf /*.*) is unlikely to cause much damage on a *NIX system as it's very unusual to have any files with dots in their names in the root directory and even more unlikely to have any directories that have dots in their names.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Again?

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  4. Re:It's the singularity by 14erCleaner · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's agents in the present will probably mod you down for saying that.

    --
    Have you read my blog lately?
  5. Re:A hot I worked for did this once by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    > Running rm -rf /*.*. (or even rm -rf /*.*) is unlikely to cause much damage on a *NIX system [...]

    Alas, times have changed. Nowadays every idiot and his dog, coming over from DOS (perhaps via OSX [1]) has the irresistible urge to name his shell scripts "foo.sh". Those are the very same people who think "all files" is spelt "*.*", so the only consolation for all that ugliness is that they bring their own antimatter along. May they annihilate themselves in a flash of light!

    [1] Yeah, yeah. OSX is Unix beneath the covers, they say. But the culture, the spirit, the soul? Rather an Unix zombie, no soul and eating braaaains.