zlacker

reminds me of the time I forgot i was on a remote connection, and could not figure out why the thing quit responding when i typed eth0 down

>>dylan6+(OP)
Had a node that I was connected to over wireguard. Wanted to reset the wireguard conf.

    sudo wg-quick down wg0

Nice one, mate. Had to drive back to log in and bring up that interface. I still do this, FWIW, but now I use `at` to schedule "up" 1 min in future haha. So far so good though it's not smart :)

>>dylan6+(OP)
or when I was futzing with display configs on a linux install, accidentally disabled my screen, and had to restore it blind

>>renewi+1j
Luckily for me, I just had to go down the hall to the data center, and then reset it with the local terminal. Compared to you, I learned the lesson on the cheap, but you got the bonus of a nice get out of jail free card. Neat CYA trick that I will keep in mind.

>>dylan6+(OP)
The Debian package installer once asked me (a long long time ago) whether I want to restart sshd after a glibc update, saying existing sessions wouldn’t be affected. That was a lie, apparently, because the SSH session I was updating the system died and the resulting SIGHUP killed the update process in a way that necessitated some recovery later.

More seriously, Mikrotik routers have a nice feature where they will rollback your config change if the connection you’re configuring one over stops responding to keepalives. Like a lot of Microtik features, it’s probably copied from some Serious Business network OS, but I wouldn’t know.

>>manana+uu
Yes, the Safe Mode button. But you have to remember to press it before you start configuring the router and then exit Safe Mode when you're done.

>>hueheh+co
That’s such an absolute hacker feeling, I was honestly surprised I got it to work, back then. Thanks for reminding me of that!

>>manana+uu
it’s probably copied from some Serious Business network OS

I wouldn't know who came first, but it's a feature of JunOS (Juniper) as well: every config apply first applies the config, then waits for confirmation on the terminal where it was ran. If confirmation isn't given within X seconds, it reverts the config change.

>>dylan6+(OP)
usually I do something like:

    # ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up

that said, I have done this:

    # reboot

...on the wrong system

>>tremon+TJ
That only applies when you do "commit confirmed".

>>dylan6+(OP)
lol, reminds me of the time I forgot I was on localhost, and needed to run a huge statistics processing task. I remembered to carefully use bg and disown so the program would keep running even after I disconnected. Then I sighed in relief and powered off my machine.

>>dylan6+(OP)
Or the time I typed `reboot` and my workstation didn't reboot, because that xterm was the department file server.

>>dylan6+(OP)
this is actually the hardest problem in computer science (develop a general intelligence capable of predicting when a command will shut down your session)

>>renewi+1j
There's a feature in many business data centers called "remote hands". Mainly to avoid the drive/flight to admin a remote machine.

>>renewi+1j
> FWIW, but now I use `at` to schedule "up" 1 min in future

Any time I’m ever doing a pfctl to change my router’s firewall rules I schedule a “revert to the n-1 rule set” job two minutes from now to avoid the trip to the basement & hunt for the serial cable.

I do +2 because once I was too close to the next minute, fat-fingered the update command & instinctively corrected it. But the change had reverted before I hit enter on the new update, so of course I blocked too much traffic and wedged my SSH connection, triggering the cursing and trip to the basement with the serial cable.

>>manana+uu
> Like a lot of Microtik features, it’s probably copied from some Serious Business network OS, but I wouldn’t know.

Not sure who came first, but OpenWRT does this if you make a breaking change in the webinterface, and connectivity is lost for 60 sec, it will rollback the changes.

>>kaba0+UH
I got my first laptop (win95 at the time) at a garage sale super cheap because the owner throught it was broken.

He'd set the resolution to 1024x768 on the 800x600 panel, once I fixed that I was good to go!

>>kaba0+UH
I recently had this hacker feeling too. I wanted to help my friend diagnose some internet issue at her place and gave her a Raspberry Pi that she could connect to her router. It had Tailscale preinstalled, so as soon as it booted, I was able to access it without her having to open ports in her router. However, I managed to mess up some network config that caused Tailscale to stop working and lost the remote access. Since I knew pretty much exactly what I did wrong, I was able to have her connect a USB keyboard to the Pi and send her exactly what to type in order to fix it, and it worked! (For some reason, she doesn't have single HDMI cable so she couldn't connect it to a monitor.)

>>stefan+Lz1
>For some reason, she doesn't have single HDMI cable so she couldn't connect it to a monitor.

LOL. Outside of computer dorks what not, it's not very common for people to have a large selection of cables to go digging through. Maybe a drawer full of decrypt USB cables that came as chargers to a phone, but most people I know lose those cables and are constantly buying replacements. So expecting the average person to have a box full of random cables suggests to me you might be living in a bit of a bubble.

>>dekhn+qV
This is like some weird version of the halting problem

>>knodi1+CT
I was halfway into a multi hour render on my 486 when I accidentally switched it off. Luckily, I caught myself before I released the power button, so I jammed an eraser under my finger and taped it down so the button wouldn’t spring back and complete the toggle.

>>dylan6+(OP)
Heh, this reminds me of my ~10 year old self. I had unknowingly infected my family PC with some form of malware, but no knowledge of AV software. I guessed, incorrectly, that perhaps the OS developers would have been smart enough to disallow users from deleting OS owned/managed files. So I went around finding and deleting everything that looked remotely official, including C:\Windows\System32. To my surprise, it worked. Until I rebooted :(

>>dylan6+Df4
i find that it’s actually fairly common for people to have accumulated several loose and random cables over time. even my mother, who is not particularly a technologically inclined individual, still had several hdmi cables and different usb cables. every single device (not just phones but things like flashlights, wireless accessories, fans, etc…) people buy that needs to be charged generally comes with a charging cable, and there are ever more usb chargeable devices coming on the market nowadays.

hell, even homeless people such as myself tend to have giant collections of random cables, even when they don’t actually have anything that requires charging.