Just A Couple Of My Terrible Blunders
I’m constraining this list to things I’ve done while running VPOP Technologies, directly related to sysadminship or customer communication. I’m not sure why these popped into my head just now.
Thankfully it was only a “chown”
I had been working under Joe for a year or so and felt like I learned quite a bit about general Unix systems administration when it happened. I was adding some htaccess-driven password protection to a customer’s site and rather than code by hand I copied the .htaccess file as well as a .htpasswd and [for kicks] a .emacs file over to a user’s home directory. The ownership of those files was set to the user_id of the user I had copied them from.
I loved wildcard matching and wielded its power often. Need to remove all of the HTML files in a directory but want to keep the JPG files? Simple: “rm *.html”. Need to change ownership of all the JPG files? Simple: “chown user1.user1 *.jpg”. Want to change ownership of all files beginning with a ‘dot’ (.htpasswd .emacs)? Simple, right? “chown user1.user1 .*” Yipes! Now all of the directories beneath my current location are owned by user1. This is not a good thing when there are 600+ home directories just below your current level. Not a good thing at all. Thank goodness we named the users’ home directories after their user_id so getting back to normal wasn’t too tough. But what if I had wanted to DELETE all files that began with a “dot”? What if I had issued: “rm .*”? Dodged a bullet there.
MySQL is perfectly normal!
In 1999 we began writing what is now known as OpenSRS for a terrific [then] little company called Tucows. We developed rapidly and setup a customer feedback loop while we tested the system. We had an active mailing list with developers who would interact with the API we included with the whole system. I was not doing the database work or any material programming; I was more of the interface between the programmers and the potential customers. But I felt like a I knew a fair bit.
This one guy, I forget his name now, sent in a note complaining that we were duplicating data and insisted that we “normalize” our database. He had been a little grumpy in the past and I was feeling threatened so I lashed out with a thoughtful and decisive response, one sure to put him in his place and demonstrate my superiority. I retorted with something like: “MySQL is a well respected and time tested RDBMS. It is widely respected as a “normal” database system”. And thenm I went on my happy way, content in my knowledge that I had put that guy back in his place.
A few days later I recalled the transaction with brother Joe and he agreed the guy was a bit of a turd. And then he told me what “normalize” meant. And then he laughed at me for coming across as “clueless Joe Jackson” to the entire list. And IRRC, he laughed and laughed and laughed again.
That guy never did respond (and why would he waste his time?) and no one ever said anything to me but every time I think of that occurrence I cringe and blush a bit.
I won’t get into the detail behind my indication that SMTP was an acronym for Sendmail Mail Transport Protocol. You get the point.
There are so many other examples of this sort of thing that I feel like hiding under my desk for the rest of my life.
I’ve learned a lot over the last 12 years, both from my blunders and from observing others. I think the source of my blunders was the fear of being outed as someone who doesn’t know “$this” or “$that”. I’m supposed to know, right? Not any more. I’m no longer afraid of saying, “hmmm, I don’t know how to do that, but I’ll look into it”, even if it is something that I bloody-well should know. That statement sounds a lot better than “MySQL is perfectly normal!”, doesn’t it?
I probably ask too many questions these days. I suppose when you’re comfortable enough to ask questions, indicating that you don’t know something, the things you do assert become more believable, even from a bag of hot air like myself.
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