Worm/Passwords

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

In article <125 at embossed.UUCP> ron at embossed.UUCP (Ron Elliott) writes:
>	4) Many of you talk about the thousands of hours lost due to 
>	   the Morris Worm.  How about something like "rm *" ?  How many
>	   hours have been lost over the last 15 years over that 
>	   bug-feature.?  Yes, I know the workarounds, and have installed
>	   them.  How come though Un*x venders still havn't issued fixed
>	   rm's or even discuss the matter in their documentation?  Or
>	   even supplied the workarounds in their distribution?

You usually know when rm * happens, and if your site has a competent
administrator you can recover your state as of the previous day.  An
rm mistake doesn't erode the trust in a world-wide community!

Now, how _do_ you fix "rm *"?  Suppose you restrict rm to delete exactly
one file.  Watch:
	foreach F (* .o)
	    rm $F
	end
OOPS!  Major bug in foreach!  Better fix that.
	for F in * .o
	do rm $F
	done
OOPS!  Major bug in for!  Better fix that.
	echo * .o | xargs -l1 rm 
OOPS!  Major bugs in echo and xargs!  Better fix them.

Moral: you can't change _one_ thing.
PS: I first heard about "rm *" in the Unix V7 documentation...