rm -rf

This is why you should make backups. I was at the International Rexx Language Symposium. I was messing with the symbolic links in /usr/bin. Somehow my rm -rf rx*.dylib gained an extra space, just before the splat. I was root. And I was tired.

The amazing thing is that the machine kept on running, but died slowly over the next few days. This is no big surprise, because there is some essential Unix stuff like pam in there. So I could not switch screens anymore, nor mount usb stick discs or start applications that did not run yet. Keynote failed after a few hours, but Adobe reader kept on trucking, to the level I could hold my second presentation using it and a previously saved-as-pdf Keynote.

I make time machine backups - so when at home after the flight from the UK I mounted the backup disc on another machine, and used zip-y (after I found there was a number of symbolic links in that directory) and unzip to restore. I had to repair the permissions on the volume, then repair the disc structure. After that the machine ran like before.

This is why you should make backups.