man bash HISTCONTROL=ignorespace unset RANDOM RANDOM=4 clear ...If RANDOM is unset, it loses its special properties, even if it is subsequently reset.
HISTCONTROL If the list of values includes ignorespace, lines which begin with a space character are not saved in the history list.
RTFM can save your server AND your bet ;-)
it is cheating of course if the predefined rules tell us about such requirements and if these are not met any more when unsetting RANDOM ahead of it.
UPDATE: added “man bash” to show how to rtfm and make the following leading space more visible
root shell? Already playing it fast and loose, I see.
The only legitimate commands for a non-root shell are
sudo -i,exit, andecho "yee haw"
This really isn’t dangerous unless you already screwed up badly. If it wipes, you just restore from backup/DR.
You do have backups and a DR plan for your prod servers, right?
Didn’t some company have a script running that would randomly kill stuff to always test redundancies?
I vaguely recall someone telling me that about netflix
that’s like starting fires on random properties to make sure your firefighters stay on their toes
Cowards version:
[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && echo 'rm -fr /... you crazy dude? NO' || echo 'Keep your french language pack, you will need it'
Fun fact there was a guy a little over a decade ago who got drunk and traded 7m barrels of oil futures. Not dollars, barrels. He made the price of oil jump up for a short while.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/jun/29/drunk-oil-trader-banned-fsa
Funnier Fact: they had to stack all those barrels behind the corporation’s building until they could sell them all.
::I made this up::
the best source
Obligatory --no-preserve-root
Modern distros today. SMH. Back in my day everyone had root at the office.
On ye olde hpux this would work, especially when you did rm-fr /$var and $var was unset and nobody unit tested their shell back then. That db server ran for 2 days though with open file handles before it finally died.
Scene : 1998, Fort Bragg 18th Support Something-or-other, IT department
Date: 11th day of the month sometime before summer. Let’s assume May.
Young Specialist looks at wall clock. Looks at time on the system. “I can fix that!”
Should I man date first? Fuck that, let’s just do it!
Proceeds to set the time in the HP Unix minicomputer that handled all supply orders for the non Special Operations side of Fort Bragg.
Oops, set date to November 5th but with the correct time. No problem, we’ll just run that date command again and flip the 5 and the 11 around. All fixed! Back to May 11th.
Comes into work the next day wondering why everyone is running around like crazy. All the processes have kicked off and are waiting for November to run again.
Ut-oh. Comes clean to NCOIC.
Aftermath: root was taken from all junior enlisted (good move) and only Staff Sergeants and above had it l. Oh, also the outside IT professional/Army civilian I assume.
Young Specialist gets written counseling (which was bullshit BTW- I made an honest mistake) and not UCMJ supposedly because I was going off to Kuwait for PCS (Permanent Change of Station) soon. Not allowed back on system.
Disclaimer: might have happened in June but either way I’m pretty sure I set the date to November and I know I got the date command order wrong at least once.
