Mastodawn

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 23h ago

#TIL: You can't save a spreadsheet in the "Save as" dialog in #LibreOffice whose file name contains an asterisk ("*"). You don't get any error message nor an greyed out "Save" button. It just does nothing, even though the originally opened file has that asterisk in the name. Escaping via backslash also doesn't work. 🤬 🤌

.oO( What happens when seasoned Unix #CLI users with strong experience in quoting and escaping try out a #GUI program… )

@xtaran Any decent filename contains at least spaces, tabs, asterisks, colons and slashes. Programs meddling against them are buggy.

Mad Alex 19h ago

@js @xtaran All those are no big thing. Now, file names with newlines in it, that's a proper grownup file name.

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 19h ago

@madalex @js: My favourite file name for a file to delete is:

-rf <Ctrl-C>

Because it requires every level of #quoting:

* Application level quoting by prefixing the file name with ./ so that rm doesn't take -rf as option.
* Shell quoting by #escaping or quoting the blank.
* Input level quoting by pressing usually <Ctrl-V> (Emacsish: <Ctrl-Q>) before <Ctrl-C> to be able to enter a literal <Ctrl-C>.

(That's something you just don't unlearn once it's in your brain. 🤓 )

#CLI #Bash #Zsh #Shell

@xtaran @madalex @js

mirabilos 19h ago

@xtaran @js @madalex @leyrer OR, you just mc, go to that file and F8 😼😽

mirabilos 19h ago

@leyrer @madalex @js @xtaran and once you know the ./ part, rm ./-<Tab> in mksh will also DTRT 😽☕️

mirabilos 19h ago

@leyrer @madalex @xtaran @js for extra evil (for tools that output the filename) add some colour codes.

One Tab and one newline in the filebame exercise different parts of brokenness and ought to also be included, as well as two UCS characters whose NFC and NFD differs, one of them in NFC, one in NFD, to break Apple, and a colon and a backslash to break Windows, and an upper-case character that you lowercase in an otherwise identical filename to break both.

@mirabilos @leyrer @xtaran @js Just as a PSA: even though you can put all those fancy characters into an file name, it's not a great idea to do so if you want them included in your company backup. Most if not all of the enterprise backup software simply throws an error when encountering anything which isn't strictly ASCII and moves on to the next file.

@madalex @mirabilos @xtaran @js booooring ....

Mad Alex 15h ago

@leyrer @mirabilos @xtaran @js I know. real men don't back up their data.

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 7h ago

@madalex @leyrer @mirabilos @js: They just upload it to FTP and let the world mirror it? 🤪

Mad Alex 2h ago

Nope. Mut zur Lücke.

@leyrer @mirabilos @js

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 2h ago

@madalex @leyrer @mirabilos @js: Da muss ich an folgendes Zitat denken:

"Niemand will #Backup. Alle wollen #Restore." (@isotopp zitiert einen Vertriebler.)

(Quelle: http://altlasten.lutz.donnerhacke.de/mitarb/lutz/usenet/Fachbegriffe.der.Informatik.html)

Lutz Donnerhacke: Fachbegriffe der Informatik

Mad Alex 2h ago

Ich weiss nur, dass mal einen langen Rechtsstreit zwischen dem HR und einem Hersteller gab, ob ein Restore eine zugesicherte Eigenschaft der verkauften Backup Lösung ist oder nicht und in dem speziellen Fall zumindest war ein Restore keine!!! zugesicherte Eigenschaft.

@leyrer @mirabilos @js @isotopp

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 2h ago

@madalex @leyrer @mirabilos @js: 🙈 Ja, nee, is' klar. 🤪

mirabilos 24m ago

@madalex @xtaran @leyrer @js näh, seit ich LUKS habe muß die (Gedächtnis‑)Lücke ein tuëndes Backup+Restore überbrücken (hab Restore so immerhin at enz testen dürfen, es tut)

@madalex @mirabilos @xtaran @js I also like to use
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*.docx

Jonas Köritz 18h ago

@leyrer @madalex @mirabilos @xtaran @js I assume extra content inside the docx zip-archive is left as-is for most parsers, so one could craft an EICAR inside a valid docx...that might lead to some interesting outcomes. PDF has attachment features too 🤔

mirabilos 18h ago

@jonas @leyrer @madalex @xtaran @js just make sure to not compress the attached file in the PDF (qpdf may help).

Howard Chu @ Symas 17h ago

@jonas @leyrer @madalex @mirabilos @xtaran @js
always remember to actually attach the item when you write "see attached"...

lobingera 19h ago

@madalex @mirabilos @leyrer @xtaran @js
"That's what she said!"

(disclosure: ich hab schon mal ein Backup geschrottet mit 'seltsamen' Dateinamen, und es waren nicht meine)

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 18h ago

@lobingera @madalex @mirabilos @leyrer @js: That reminds me of a story that happened to @df7cb in the late 90s:

His account was the most recent one created on a host. He created a symbolic link named index.html in his public_html directory pointing to /dev/null. Backup was done using tar. tar back then had a bug when applying ownership and permissions to symlinks in the archive. So after restoring a backup, only two users were still able to work: He and root. Because he owned /dev/null. 🤪

mirabilos 18h ago

@xtaran @lobingera @madalex @leyrer @js @df7cb that’s assuming you can even set them; AFAICT, on BSD, symlinks’ permission bits, uid and gid are ignored(?), except for operations on the symlink itself, where the uid and gid come into play.

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 18h ago

@mirabilos @lobingera @madalex @leyrer @js: Might have been SunOS 4. @df7cb probably remembers better.

mirabilos 18h ago

@xtaran @lobingera @madalex @leyrer @js @df7cb nah, I can easily believe someone forgot to exclude symlinks from permission restores

Christoph Berg 16h ago

@xtaran @lobingera @madalex @mirabilos @leyrer @js the symlink to /dev/null was this dreaded lock file in .netscape

Axel 🚴😷🐧🐪⌨ | #WeAreNatenom 19h ago

@madalex @mirabilos @leyrer @js: So we have a buggy backup system? 😇

Mad Alex 15h ago

I'll leave it to you to talk to Daniele about that fine product we've got and why it is the best there is.

On the other hand, I still recognize everything from the early nineties when it was still called ADSM and probably was state of the art - at least back then.

@mirabilos @leyrer @js