@b0rk Excellent question!

#cmd #linux #commandline #texteditor

@b0rk put EVERYTHING in git, so I can just revert/reset --hard HEAD to undo whatever mess I just created

@b0rk
I know this isn't recent (been doing command line for decades), but I still have the
alias rm rm -i
in my shell setup.

@b0rk I tried saferm and I still think that should be the default everywhere...

... but I've more come to terms with the paranoia. Care is fundamentally necessary, being paranoid about it is *correct*. Most tools are well-behaved by default, but some are designed to let you shoot your foot if that's what you want.

@b0rk As a developer, committing constantly. I should never lose more than a couple days of work. As a user, backing up constantly. It no longer matters if I make a mistake on the CLI or not.

@b0rk here's my tricks:

- use tab completion, if it doesn't tab complete (or if it does and it shouldn't because the file isn't supposed to exist yet) there's something wrong
- avoid using wildcards and relative paths, or use them as specific as possible
- test on backups first!
- avoid doing anything destructive at all, and use a GUI whenever possible, I don't want to discourage use of CLI but hey, if you can :)

@b0rk Setting up robust backups.

My teenager is learning to use command line interfaces on the Minecraft server they operate. And they have used the command line to accidentally delete a huge amount of personal work.

I think the sandbox nature of the environment and the low but non-trivial stakes for errors is a great mechanism for safe learning of the tool—especially learning to make sure they know what a command does before using it, and to never rush the process of executing untested commands.

@b0rk as someone who recently (last week) accidentally deleted my home dir due to a cmd line typo, the thing that's helped me is having everything in an automatically backed up, easily restorable form. nuke the os and start again, restore to a restore point, or something else super easy.

@b0rk cant remember the toolname yet - but basicly it forces you to enter the name of the mashine if you do something like reboot, shutdown , etc.
it is relative popular among some of us.
@3rz ideas ?

@b0rk having a fancy prompt is SO important! I like to know what system I'm on, what permissions I have (user, whether I'm superuser, etc), the area I'm working in, and especially Git branch - that's the only one I don't explicitly mention when I enter a workdir.

@b0rk daily automated backups. I like Arq.

@b0rk

https://learngitbranching.js.org/
Was very helpful.

So was reading the first 7 chapters of https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

I only read the first 3 chapters at first and then slowly read up to 7 intermittently.

@b0rk I really struggle to read man docs, they just… don’t have enough examples to make sense to me. So anything that gives me another way of finding the info I need without a massive textbook was good. I have printed copies of all your zines, and I use ohshitgit all the time. Seeing example use cases described in words, and then shown via example commands helped me understand tremendously.

@b0rk
Up to date backups, and - as another person mentioned - keep everything you can in git.

It's easy to be fearless when you always have an undo button.

Edit: Besides, if you are seriously worried about accidentally deleting files, you should be just as worried about a hardware failure or software bug doing it for you. It probably means you don't have backups or don't trust them. That's the first thing you need to fix.

@b0rk

my prompts still have both hostname and current dir, after i rebooted the wrong host twice, a gazillion years back.

some fears never quite go away but new folks should also know that command line is still a bit intimidating even to those of us who have used them for years. a good mix of confidence and caution will serve you well at any stage in your learning curve.

@b0rk I've never quite gotten over the fear, despite being a 40-year command line veteran and the kind of person who looks back over her shoulder asking "What?" to the complaining, cowering angels.

For a while I had a piece of label tape on my monitor that read "Read twice, Enter once."

But nightly automatic backups are always your friend.

so many great answers in this thread, appreciate you all

@b0rk Containers have been really helpful for both learning and protecting people from themselves. I personally use them as a sandbox for testing commands and tools before running them in an environment. This is something I also encourage others to do as it pays to try things out!

@b0rk
To be honest, I never got over this fear unless I'm on a Pi, where I know I can re-image the SD card. But on a server? I still freak out when I have to copy files. I'm double or triple checking every potentially destructive line, then explaining it to a rubber ducky, before hitting enter.

@b0rk A prompt that tells me the current working directory and autocomplete (such as fish), redundant & robust continuous backups and just gradual practice with using the command line to do weird things over time. Simply knowing the working directory (and regularly listing its contents) does wonders for confidence. I’ve occasionally asked someone who is more skillful than I am to do sanity checks on my commands when they became complicated. Went from just not using CLI to almost living in it.

@b0rk Virtual machines?

@b0rk Place 'alias rm="rm -i"' i .bash_aliases so 'rm' prompts for confirmation. Can explicitly override with -f.

@b0rk Using said safe environment to actually do said destructive things.

As for file destruction, I have successfully carved data back from the bare bytes of a drive whose index I fried beyond recoverability. It wasn't fun but knowing I could get (some) stuff back was a relief.

@b0rk when I have to remote in to do some potentially destructive work on a Really Important server I set my terminal background colour to the angriest red I can find. It doesn't fully solve the fear but it does remind me to be even more careful than usual.

@b0rk since no one seems to have mentioned it before:

I aliased "rm" to "trash-put" from the "trash-cli" Linux package, which moves deleted files into a "trash can" (hidden directory in home dir) where all or individual files can be restored.

Did this after wrongly deleting files wrongly too often, and significantly reduced my own anxiety when using rm.

https://man.archlinux.org/man/trash-put.1.en