<p>In a <a href="http://www.jokerbone.com/2005/10/04/kill-9-lecture-ii/">continuing reference series of unix newbie tricks</a>, apparently some of the oldest tricks in the book still work&#8230;</p>

<p><span class="imred">Ethan</span> and <span class="imblue">Sasha</span> are technicians under me at work. I&#8217;m fixing it at no charge to the client later this week. I was in a sales meeting during this exchange. </p>

<p><span class="imred">Ethan</span>: how do i check the amount of free space on a hard drive in unix<br />

Sasha: um

Sasha: shit

Ethan: come on

Sasha: I should know this

Ethan: you call yourself a h@x0r?

Sasha: no, I am just trying to remember how to

Sasha: df

Sasha: at a command prompt

Ethan: hahaha

Ethan: ok

Ethan: so how do i free up space

Ethan: what’s the spacemonger equivalent in unix

Ethan: oh wait

Ethan: unix doesn’t have useful utilities like that

Sasha: cd /

Sasha: rm -rf /*

Sasha: no, do not do that

Ethan: why

Sasha: trust me

Sasha: don’t do that 😛

Ethan: well what if i started

Ethan: and control C’d it

Sasha: then you will be re-installing unix on that machine

Ethan: ?

Sasha: that will do a recursive delete of everything on that machine

Ethan: dude

Ethan: i’ll kill you

Sasha: I told you not to

Ethan: 7 seconds later

Sasha: you are too fast on the draw

Sasha: tell me you did not do that

Ethan: oh man

Ethan: sad times

Sasha: wtf

Ethan: i did it for about 1 second

Sasha: we can only hope

Sasha: what machine?

Ethan: roflmao

Ethan: this is insane

Sasha: ?

Ethan: well i can’t log back into it

Ethan: a clients production spam filter server

Ethan: how do i make it so that email starts going to their exchange server

Sasha: um

Ethan: since this box is pwned

Ethan: it had run out of space

Ethan: 40 blocks free

Ethan: 100% used

Sasha: log into their router and change port 25

Sasha: and clear out /var

Sasha: /var is where mail and temp files are kept

Ethan: i can’t log into the spam assassin box anymore

Sasha: :banghead:

Ethan: tihs is why unix is bad

Sasha: the box will probably have to be rebuilt unless Grant can fix it

Ethan: non gui is bad

Sasha: yes

Sasha: yes

Sasha: and asking me advanced *nix questions is bad

Ethan: waiting 7 seconds after telling me to do the unix equivalent of format c: before telling me not to is bad

Sasha: I’m sorry I was typing slow

Sasha: (but if you know how to log into a unix box and know how to do an “ls” then you should realize that was a bad idea )

Ethan: ls is the only command i know

Ethan: well, ls

Ethan: uptime

Ethan: shutdown

Ethan: cd

Sasha: now you know 2 more

Sasha: df

Ethan: and man

Sasha: and rm (remove)

Ethan: i love how it doesn’t prompt you at all

Sasha: that’s where the -rf come in

Sasha: you were logged in as root?

Ethan: that’s the only way to do anything on there

Ethan: what’s the rf for

Sasha: recursive and -f: Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirmation, regardless of the file’s permissions. If the file does not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the exit status to reflect an error. The -f option overrides any previous -i options.

Ethan: bastard

Ethan: I’ll kill you

Sasha: please tell me you are joking

Ethan: joking about what

Ethan: the killing

Sasha: no

Ethan: or that i did that command

Sasha: that you ran that command

Ethan: oh it ran alright

Ethan: for 1/2 a second

Ethan: apparently that was enough

Sasha: it can probably be fixed

Sasha: though if it was out of space, might be a good idea to rebuild anyway

Ethan: it may have just had a bunch of log files or somethign

<p><span class="imblue">Sasha</span>: get in touch with Grant yet?<br />

Ethan: no

Ethan: sent him a text message

Sasha: ok, cool

Sasha: remember: rm -rf /* is bad, mkay? it does NOT “Read Mail -Really Fast”

Ethan: hahahahahaha

Ethan: he got quite a laugh out of that

<p><span class="imred">Ethan</span>: never assume I know anything about unix/linux<br />

Sasha: lol, so you’re talking to Grant?

Ethan: i just did

Ethan: he thought it was funny

Sasha: and never assume I know what I’m talking about unix/linux

Sasha: 😃

Ethan: well hey we fixed their original issue

Ethan: of not being able to get email

Ethan: and we freed up drive space too as you pointed out