I was reminded of something recently when someone was using a gooey; they hadn’t made any changes, but clicked “Ok” after reviewing something. A bug in the gooey resulted in a whole bunch of DNS CNAMEs being removed.
The fault is of course with the gooey for having a silly bug, but it was also a reminder to reduce risk whenever you have root (or equivalent).
- The “Ok” in a gooey should be read as “Please make the changes I have asked for”; if you are not intentionally making changes, why click on it?
- One of the reasons I switched to zsh was that I’d heard of accidents involving wildcards, so I wanted the feature that expanded wildcards within the shell before activating the command.
- If you are looking at a configuration file, why are you using an editor? Use view rather than vi, and if you are in vi quit (“:q!”) rather than save and exit (“ZZ”).
- If you have an account with special rights , don’t browse the Internet with it. You should have two accounts – one for ordinary stuff and one used just when you need additional rights. That’s two long and strong passwords to remember; life is hard; get used to it.
But this is more than just a few tips for reducing risk; it’s about an attitude that goes beyond simply being careful and towards designing your work flow in ways that reduces risk.
