Came across this while deleting a user on a debian box.

It gave me about 4 seconds to press Ctrl+C, which I spent carefully reading the WARNING message. Fortunately it didn't actually delete the root account anyway.

Introduced on March 2: #145430 deluser 3.47 when multiple usernames correspond to a single uid and fixed on March 27: #469165 /usr/sbin/deluser: deluser thinks I want to remove the root user.  Note that this only affected testing, not stable.  If you want to stick with testing you might want to dist-upgrade to make sure you have the latest package.

jnz:

Introduced on March 2: #145430 deluser 3.47 when multiple usernames correspond to a single uid and fixed on March 27: #469165 /usr/sbin/deluser: deluser thinks I want to remove the root user.  Note that this only affected testing, not stable.  If you want to stick with testing you might want to dist-upgrade to make sure you have the latest package.

 

Linux: Perpetual Beta

 

jnz:

Note that this only affected testing, not stable.

 

alegr:

Linux: Perpetual Beta

And how does the second follow from the first. A bug's present in testing, not in stable. Stable is just that; it's in no way a 'perpetual beta'. Testing maybe (but what Debian mean by 'testing' is somewhat removed from what 'beta' usually means).

alegr:

Linux: Perpetual Beta

LOOKIE ME I IZ CLIVR!!!


Does "testing" mean nothing to you? (answer: it means you are ASKING FOR betas). Seriously, grow up or GTFO!

MPS, please commence beating.

alegr:

jnz:

Introduced on March 2: #145430 deluser 3.47 when multiple usernames correspond to a single uid and fixed on March 27: #469165 /usr/sbin/deluser: deluser thinks I want to remove the root user.  Note that this only affected testing, not stable.  If you want to stick with testing you might want to dist-upgrade to make sure you have the latest package.

 

Linux: Perpetual Beta

 

 A testing release with a bug? Scandalous!

CapitalT:

Does "testing" mean nothing to you? (answer: it means you are ASKING FOR betas). Seriously, grow up or GTFO!

 

No U!

See? Someone says negative about linux and BOOM violent reaction.  But that is ok.

Defend MS and you are teh shillz!

Maciej:

 A testing release with a bug? Scandalous!

 

And yet, watch the tech/noob blogs as soon as MS releases any beta. Watch them fill up with 'OMGz Noobz!' 'M$ sucks!' etc, etc.

Any criticism Linux gets for this is well deserved IMO. 

MasterPlanSoftware:

CapitalT:

Does "testing" mean nothing to you? (answer: it means you are ASKING FOR betas). Seriously, grow up or GTFO!

 

No U!

See? Someone says negative about linux and BOOM violent reaction.  But that is ok.

Defend MS and you are teh shillz!

Wow, what is going on in the world today? A flamer flames a linux-flamer, and then a flamer flames the linux-flamer-flamer. Does that make me a linux-flamer-flamer-flamer-flamer now?

dtech:

Wow, what is going on in the world today? A flamer flames a linux-flamer, and then a flamer flames the linux-flamer-flamer. Does that make me a linux-flamer-flamer-flamer-flamer now?

 

Halp! Everything is on teh firez!

MasterPlanSoftware:

Maciej:

 A testing release with a bug? Scandalous!

 

And yet, watch the tech/noob blogs as soon as MS releases any beta. Watch them fill up with 'OMGz Noobz!' 'M$ sucks!' etc, etc.

Any criticism Linux gets for this is well deserved IMO. 

 

Every time I use linux and think "Gee, linux works so f-ing well, I think i'll scrap windows now" I come across some nasty bug that requires 6 hours minimum of research to figure out that I needed to uncomment a single line in some defaults file.

For fuck's sake its 2008, can't ubntu detect that I'm using SATA and enable DMA on hdd/cd-rom during installation? Why does it default to off? Cant they set good defaults?

 

In any case, some bugs are just stupid, if Linux has it, it does not make it any less stupid.

dlikhten:

Every time I use linux and think "Gee, linux works so f-ing well, I think i'll scrap windows now" I come across some nasty bug that requires 6 hours minimum of research to figure out that I needed to uncomment a single line in some defaults file.

 

Yeah but to be fair, you couldn't even manage to install Windows....

MasterPlanSoftware:

Yeah but to be fair, you couldn't even manage to install Windows....

Windows is hard to install! So many clicks on "Next"...

 

bstorer:

Windows is hard to install! So many clicks on "Next"...

Yeah but then you have to *gasp* UPDATE it! WTF??!!!

MasterPlanSoftware:

 

bstorer:

Windows is hard to install! So many clicks on "Next"...

Yeah but then you have to *gasp* UPDATE it! WTF??!!!

It's just a money grab by Microsoft. They only put out new versions so that I'll have to update my 8-year-old software.

bstorer:

It's just a money grab by Microsoft. They only put out new versions so that I'll have to update my 8-year-old software.

 

What did you expect  from a CONVICTED MONOPOLIST?!

MasterPlanSoftware:

dlikhten:

Every time I use linux and think "Gee, linux works so f-ing well, I think i'll scrap windows now" I come across some nasty bug that requires 6 hours minimum of research to figure out that I needed to uncomment a single line in some defaults file.

 

Yeah but to be fair, you couldn't even manage to install Windows....

 

Wait what? Installing windows takes a very long time (with all the updates), never said it was a problem. Its just much faster to install linux caz you can download the latest version into an installer CD vs having to install, then download 1,000 patches

For the most part installing windows, while time consuming, is a breeze compared to installing linux, unless you are one of the lucky onces and 100% of your hardware is supported out-of-the-box by the installer.

Ok 6 hrs minimum was over-exadurated.

dlikhten:

MasterPlanSoftware:

dlikhten:

Every time I use linux and think "Gee, linux works so f-ing well, I think i'll scrap windows now" I come across some nasty bug that requires 6 hours minimum of research to figure out that I needed to uncomment a single line in some defaults file.

 

Yeah but to be fair, you couldn't even manage to install Windows....

 

Wait what? Installing windows takes a very long time (with all the updates), never said it was a problem. Its just much faster to install linux caz you can download the latest version into an installer CD vs having to install, then download 1,000 patches

For the most part installing windows, while time consuming, is a breeze compared to installing linux, unless you are one of the lucky onces and 100% of your hardware is supported out-of-the-box by the installer.

Ok 6 hrs minimum was over-exadurated.

Then you have different experiences than me. While I just am using windows (can't go without my games and wine just doesn't quite get them) I've installed linux a few times. The only thing I've always have had problems with is my wlan card. I already had one when you still paid ƒ1300 for a access point (that's a guilder; 2,20 is a euro and at the time it was about $600) and it hasn't improved to me since. Right now I have a flashed WRT54G (dd-wrt) which acts as the bridge to the WLAN. About 99% connection quality and no configuration whathowever on any system. Delicious.

dlikhten:

over-exadurated.

 

Sorry, what?

The delay was done with

for( int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i ) {}

It worked fine on a 133 MHz Pentium.  Your computer is just too fast.

(The rest of the comments in this thread are the real WTF.) 

AlpineR:

The delay was done with

for( int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i ) {}

It worked fine on a 133 MHz Pentium.  Your computer is just too fast.

(The rest of the comments in this thread are the real WTF.) 

 

Is that a joke or that is the actual code?

dlikhten:

Is that a joke or that is the actual code?

 

The program was a shell script so the actual code was "sleep 5": http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/adduser/trunk/deluser?rev=766&r1=746&r2=766.  It has been changed in the source repository  to use a --force command line parameter instead: http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/adduser/trunk/deluser?rev=781&r1=780&r2=781.  Presumably this fix will appear in the next version of the package.

If you don't want to deal with bugs like these, run debian stable.

If you want fresher packages than stable offers, either find 3rd party repositories, or switch to ubuntu. 

jnz:

 

Well now its actually better. At least it was sleep 5 and not a loop.

merreborn:

In any case, stable or not, the original solution was just stupid. You can't excuse stupidity with "hey its unstable".

dlikhten:

In any case, stable or not, the original solution was just stupid. You can't excuse stupidity with "hey its unstable".

dlikhten is unstable. 

You're right it doesn't work

dlikhten:

In any case, stable or not, the original solution was just stupid. You can't excuse stupidity with "hey its unstable".

 

Ok, I'll admit the solution was less than optimal.  But realize that before this change there was no check at all.  The script would delete the root user with no warnings and break your system.  So the warning/delay didn't make things any worse than they were.  The "obvious" fix of asking for user confirmation was ruled out since deluser is called by other scripts.  Although I have to wonder about how often another script would have a legitimate reason to remove the root account....

If there hadn't been a typo in the variable in the original patch this message would have very rarely ever been encountered by anybody and those few people who saw it might have been saved from quite a bit of data loss.  From that perspective it made sense to include it at least until something better was available.

dlikhten:

Every time I use linux and think "Gee, linux works so f-ing well, I think i'll scrap windows now" I come across some nasty bug that requires 6 hours minimum of research to figure out that I needed to uncomment a single line in some defaults file.

 

You mean like the dual monitor issue we ran into at work.  One of the new compositors insisted that we go Linux, its what he knew and he's incredibly, irritatingly, vocal about how much he hates Windows; its dialog boxes, its paths, that it doesn't come with Perl preinstalled, that its got blue colours, etc.

Every single workstation we run is dual monitor, Maya takes up a lot of screen real estate.  Turns out there's a nifty bug in redhat, or ubuntu, or gnome, or whatever, that causes the entire system to hang when you have two monitors plugged in.  I didn't have to deal with it, but the IT guy who did spent nearly 2 days troubleshooting it; is it a maya problem?  is it a linux problem?  is it a hardware issue?  driver issue? etc.  Turns out there's some random, poorly named setting that needs to be uncommented in some obscure settings file to make this work.

Sort of trumps the "windows keeps wanting me to clean up my desktop icons" whining.

Soviut:

Turns out there's a nifty bug in redhat, or ubuntu, or gnome, or whatever, that causes the entire system to hang when you have two monitors plugged in.

When I ran Dual-monitors on Ubuntu (I use x2x now) I found that if you unplug one of those monitors X will crash and make the other monitor unusable. From my understanding X has been a very long lasting bane for many people running Linux, it's one of the things that Linux should not have inherited from Unix IMO.

Lingerance:

Soviut:

Turns out there's a nifty bug in redhat, or ubuntu, or gnome, or whatever, that causes the entire system to hang when you have two monitors plugged in.

When I ran Dual-monitors on Ubuntu (I use x2x now) I found that if you unplug one of those monitors X will crash and make the other monitor unusable. From my understanding X has been a very long lasting bane for many people running Linux, it's one of the things that Linux should not have inherited from Unix IMO.

Great. Now you've just given SCO more fuel.

dtech:

Right now I have a flashed WRT54G (dd-wrt) which acts as the bridge to the WLAN. About 99% connection quality and no configuration whathowever on any system. Delicious.

So you haven't password-protected your wireless connections?

 

I dunno. Around 2004 I've been using Redhat Linux for a while. That was a stable release. I would tell you, that MS would be ashamed to release such quality as WinME beta. GUI was just awful. Both KDE and Gnome were piece of shit.

And please don't BS me about "Linux is Kernel". Windows NT-based kernel is rock solid and secure. The problems is that there are billions of lusers running with administrative privileges. As soon as you trick an admin into running rogue code, game is over. For Linux, too. And for OS X.

 

 *sigh*  I remember when debian bugs only resulted in completely worthless encryption that made compromise of the machine trivial..

alegr:

dtech:

Right now I have a flashed WRT54G (dd-wrt) which acts as the bridge to the WLAN. About 99% connection quality and no configuration whathowever on any system. Delicious.

So you haven't password-protected your wireless connections?

Yes I have, WPA TKIP since it was just released. The "AP" is act as my wireless adapter and also handles the encryption..

dtech:

alegr:

dtech:

Right now I have a flashed WRT54G (dd-wrt) which acts as the bridge to the WLAN. About 99% connection quality and no configuration whathowever on any system. Delicious.

So you haven't password-protected your wireless connections?

Yes I have, WPA TKIP since it was just released. The "AP" is act as my wireless adapter and also handles the encryption..

OK, I understand you have encryption. Now, how about authentication? That was the question.

 

alegr:

OK, I understand you have encryption. Now, how about authentication? That was the question.

 

I don't think you can use WPA without setting up passwords. I think you missed the point of using an access point as a bridge though. The computer(s) connect to the ethernet ports on the WRT54G. There is neither encryption, authentication nor any configuration involved. You may need to physically secure the ports if you're afraid of people using your link :) The WRT54G then connects to another WLAN node (this is configured once and never needs to be touched again.) 

Indeed, it's no less insecure than just with the router. Anybody with physical access to the pre-configured AP could also access the physical router...