Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 09:06:24 -0600 From: Tillman Hodgson <tillman@seekingfire.com> To: FreeBSD-Ports <freebsd-ports@freebsd.org> Subject: Ports foot-shooting revealed! (learning the hard way ...) Message-ID: <20050131150624.GO9276@seekingfire.com>
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Howdy folks, This isn't a rant, because I'd have to rant about my own stupidity. Instead it's more of a humourous story about what /not/ to do. Anyway, I was poking around for a port a few days ago, so I did this: # cd /usr/ports # make seach name="tor" make: don't know how to make seach. Stop Gah. I do that all the time. It's like my fingers sometimes don't hit the 'r' key hard enough. (Yes, this is part of the foot-shooting story). Ok, here we go again: # make search name="^tor" (Much better, output is a bunch of results instead of an error) Oh, hey /usr/ports/security/tor looks like what I was thinking of! # cd /usr/pots/security/tor bash: cd: usr/pots/security/tor: No such file or directory (I didn't notice this -- typing too fast) # make install (starts to build *all* ports in the ports tree ...) (I wander off for some coffee, thinking all is right with the world) I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to build *all* ports, especially considering that some of them would conflict with each other. So I don't think that this command would even work (given enough time, CPU and disk space). I was certainly surprised the first time I did it. In some ways it reminds me the "rm -rf / shouldn't work" bike shed from a few months ago. Checking for PWD=/usr/ports would be the same bike shed, I suspect. Granted, it could be easily solved by smarter shell usage. For example, I could have done `cd /usr/pots/security/tor && make install` (my new preferred "watch out for typos!" method). Or I could have actually waited a second before typing `make install` and *read* the error message. Practiced safe "root" and all that. But I didn't. Twice now, in the past few years. I generally notice about the time that I think "Hmmmm, that port shouldn't be taking *that* long to build ...". The cleanup isn't too hard: the dates from the /var/db/ stuff are very helpful. But it's annoying :-) Ah well, hopefully someone will learn from me revealing my foot-shooting to the world and avoid a similar fate ;-) -T -- The strictest limits are self-imposed. - Friedre Ginaz, Philosophy of the Swordmaster
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