Who, Me? — Lessons from IT Mistakes
It's Monday morning, and a new week of opportunities awaits IT professionals everywhere. To kick off the week, The Register presents another edition of Who, Me? — our reader-contributed column that highlights workplace blunders and the accidental adventures of tech staff trying to survive them.
A Student's Server Slip-Up
This week, meet a contributor we'll call "Wilma." During her university days, Wilma volunteered with a student association's website team. After the team developed a new site version, her task was to upload it.
She planned to delete the old site first, then load the new code. However, she mistakenly accessed the web server's root directory, `/var/www`, instead of the specific site directory. As a result, she deleted all the websites hosted on the student association’s server.
> “I was quite new to Linux and wasn’t used to command line interfaces,” Wilma explained.
Fortunately, a knowledgeable colleague restored the websites from backups, but Wilma was barred from working on the site afterward.
Lessons Learned and Funny Fails
- Playing ball games in the datacenter might seem unproductive, but some teams did it while trying to win their league.
- A part-time DBA's mistake led to full-time hiring after a failed failover.
- A CIO’s dangerous order prompted the security team to implement risky modifications.
- Teen interns brute-forced a disk installation, with predictable consequences.
Wilma noted that after her mistake, she developed the habit of double-checking commands before executing them on Linux, emphasizing, “Linux will do exactly what you tell it, and it won't ask if you're sure.”
Share Your Tech Blunders
Have you made a major mistake with unfamiliar technology? The biggest lesson often comes from these stories. Click here to share your own mishap with Who, Me? — we'd love to hear your story!
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