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12 hours later…
13:14
I just removed thanks from two posts you posted today. From your top 10 posts "thanks" in some form or another had to be removed by 7 different people. Please stop including this irrelevant material (read help→tour: no distractions, no chit-chat). so we can focus on answering questions instead of correcting yours. Thank you. — Anthon 36 secs ago
 
6 hours later…
19:18
Guess it's a good thing they got that tribble infestation under control. Wonder how they got one at SE HQ in the first place...
@mattdm has Fedora really decided to use the hamburger button as their server distro logo?
That is some brilliant trolling.
@derobert tribble?
@derobert Some context might be helpful.
@derobert I see.
19:33
And if you don't recognize Spock... there is little hope :-P
@derobert I know who Spock is.
*shock*
Spock, commonly Mr. Spock (sometimes popularly referred to as: Spock, son of Sarek), is a fictional character in the Star Trek media franchise. Spock was first portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in the original Star Trek series, and also appears in the animated Star Trek series, a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, eight of the Star Trek feature films, and numerous Star Trek novels, comics, and video games. In addition to this, numerous actors portrayed the various stages of Spock's rapid growth, due to the effects of the Genesis Planet, in the 1984 Star Trek film Star Trek III: The Search...
@derobert That's one very redundant WP entry.
@derobert :)
20:00
@derobert I hope you're not actually a Star Trek fan. Are you?
@FaheemMitha Why's that? I can't really be described as a fan (well, at least not compared to real Star Trek fans), but I've seen most of it.
I haven't seen some of the most recent movies, I think that's all I haven't seen.
@derobert Why's what?
@FaheemMitha That you hope I'm not actually a Star Trek fan.
@derobert Oh. I just think Star Trek is kind of stupid. Though not as stupid as Star Wars.
Granted, the two don't have much in common.
@derobert I've actually seen the two newest films. After the reboot. They're watchable.
@FaheemMitha Well, they take place in space. That's about it.
20:04
@derobert And have unconvincing aliens in them.
Though ST seems downright mature compared to SW.
@FaheemMitha That's mostly the whole sci-fi genre
@derobert Not all sf aliens are unconvincing.
Just most.
@derobert Possibly true. I'm no authority.
The Vernor Vinge aliens in A Fire Upon the Deep were pretty good, though.
Haven't read it...
20:07
I've got to hand it to Russell Brand. He's quite entertaining.
@derobert Good novel. At least, I think so.
20:47
WTF: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/205124/… .... why would anyone expect that mount command to work?
@derobert I second Faheem's recommendation
@derobert it wouldn't be the first time someone thinks that if they have one disk in a RAID-0 array, they have half the files
@Gilles Well, they do, just not usefully :-P
Though with LVM, its possibly concatenated instead of striped, so half the files may actually be intact. Of course the filesystem is very, very unhappy.
That's one reason I like mirrors. You do have a copy of all files on both disks. At least, I think so.
RAID 1, I mean.
@derobert good luck finding them though
It's probably good practice to routinely test rm -Rf --no-preserve-root / on a system that's entirely RAID-0, to remind yourself what RAID-0 means. :-/
20:53
@derobert I'd say they have half of the files, but not half the files
@derobert it's just as destructive on RAID-1, only a little slowr. And more instructive, because it reminds you that mirroring ≠ backup.
@Gilles Yep. Especially if the inode for the file was on the other half. But at least data recovery tools stand a chance by scanning for patterns and finding files...
And of course, if you have a bunch of LVs, some may be entirely on that one disk, and they're perfectly fine.
@Gilles Indeed. Complete filesystem loss is a lot less likely with RAID-1, though. RAID-0 practically begs for it.
@derobert complete loss from a hardware problem is less likely
@Gilles Yes that's the whole point: RAID-1 survives the loss of a drive, but RAID-0 survives no loss
then there's LVM spanning
@StephenKitt but we were talking about rm -rf
@Gilles Yes. And hopefully with competent operators, loss from hardware problems are far more common that complete loss from operator f-up.
20:58
@Gilles I know, and nothing survives that
just backups ;-)
@derobert “competent operators”? I'd rather put my faith in hard disks not failing
@Gilles no, I was joking to actually run that rm -Rf on purpose, to remind yourself how likely hardware failure is to do it for you.
@derobert In my experience most data loss comes from software bugs or full filesystems...
@StephenKitt Sure, but that's normally a file or two. Backups are definitely a must. And I've certainly lost data (say, MythTV recordings) from full filesystems. Not even backups help there.
@derobert Yup, and the rm -rf trick is useful to test backups!
21:04
As far as losing the entire filesystem, I've had that happen mostly only for hardware failure. And I've had RAID1/5/6 save me from having to restore a backup many, many times.
BTW: Anyone have a clue what this comment is talking about? Asked him to upload a picture using the button above the editor:
When uploading the pictures using that button is where it told me that the picture couldn't have frames. — MaurolepisDreki 4 mins ago
@derobert either a message from the browser about frames, or a bad translation
in any case, 1-rep users can't upload pictures
no, wait, they removed that restriction a while ago
Well, I upvoted the question just in case. No longer a 1-rep user.
"For security reasons, framing is not allowed; click OK to remove frames." I click OK and it leads me to a non-descript server side error. — MaurolepisDreki 15 secs ago
"On rebooting, the system broke at 0.267166 minutes into the launch telling me it can't find the hard disk." That's oddly precise.
@FaheemMitha I bet that's the time stamp the kernel spits out.
@derobert Oh, does it? Hmm.
21:14
@FaheemMitha presumably converted from 16.03s, but why convert to minutes?
@Gilles That's probably just his interpretation
@Gilles Ah, that would explain it.
Log lines like [ 0.257427] PCI host bridge to bus 0000:00
Yep. So it's probably actually seconds, and OP just thought minutes
Rounding off at 6 decimal places. Maybe he was whipped at school for including insufficient decimal places.
21:15
The kernel outputs 6 digits...
That /home vs ~ thing must be a dupe. I think I've seen it before.
564
Q: Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory?

Lelouch LamperougeI have often wondered why the ~ represents the home directory of a user. Is there a reason behind this, or is it just some infrequently used character?

perhaps?
No, maybe not.
While there are lots of knowledgeable people around, I was cleaning out some of my obsolete comments and came across unix.stackexchange.com/questions/67999
Would anyone know why my answer was converted to a comment?
And how do you quote posts and comments nicely in chat?
@StephenKitt Ask @slm, perhaps.
converted to a comment by slm♦ Oct 2 '14 at 12:32
You could probably get a mod to switch it back.
Ah right, I don't have enough rep to see that!
Apparently I could convert it back myself, my answer's still there with the Undelete link...
@StephenKitt oh, what do you see?
@StephenKitt you can't undelete something that a mod deleted
21:21
@StephenKitt Not by yourself.
I just see "your post was converted to a comment; see the help center."
Oh yes, indeed; the Undelete link just says "vote to ..."
@StephenKitt paste a message with only a link, or the :12345 reply text plus a space plus the link. @somebody plus the link doesn't work.
I'm not fussed about the answer, I was asking out of curiosity
@Gilles OK thanks
So why didn't my link above work? There's no @ in that message...
@StephenKitt The link needs to be the entire message (except the :number in front, if any)
@StephenKitt just tell the mods you're a DD. :-)
21:23
@derobert Ah excellent, thanks
@StephenKitt the message has to have only the link and optionally a :1234 reply indicator. No other text.
If you don't mind revealing your secret identity, that is.
@FaheemMitha It's not a secret, it's in my bio ;-).
@StephenKitt Oh, right. If you were a superhero, you would be outed immediately. :-)
And being a DD isn't a guarantee of perfection, I get things wrong like anyone else, including here...
Well that's my alternate Clark Kent account.
21:27
@StephenKitt What is?
@FaheemMitha my superhero account that's waiting to be outed
@StephenKitt Wait, are you the alter-ego of Stéphane Chazelas?
Well spotted :-P
Actually it's quite funny, we're sort of opposites: he's French and lives in Edinburgh, I'm British, lived in Edinburgh and now in France...
I'm French and living in France. We need someone living in Edinburgh to complete the set
That shouldn't be too hard to find, there's a ton of sysadmins, developers and general techies in Edinburgh
21:38
Information Security has a bunch of Scotts, but IIRC they all live in the boondocks
@derobert I think you meant to say, the mild-mannered alter-ego of Stéphane Chazelas.
@StephenKitt you are mild mannered, right?
@FaheemMitha I'd say so but I'm biased
@StephenKitt good enough for me.

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