this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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What's (are) the funniest/stupidest way(s) you've broken your linux setup? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 10 months ago by fl42v@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Tinkering is all fun and games, until it's 4 am, your vision is blurry, and thinking straight becomes a non-option, or perhaps you just get overly confident, type something and press enter before considering the consequences of the command you're about to execute... And then all you have is a kernel panic and one thought bouncing in your head: "damn, what did I expect to happen?".

Off the top of my head I remember 2 of those. Both happened a while ago, so I don't remember all the details, unfortunately.

For the warmup, removing PAM. I was trying to convert my artix install to a regular arch without reinstalling everything. Should be kinda simple: change repos, install systemd, uninstall dinit and it's units, profit. Yet after doing just that I was left with some PAM errors... So, I Rdd-ed libpam instead of just using --overwrite. Needless to say, I had to search for live usb yet again.

And the one at least I find quite funny. After about a year of using arch I was considering myself a confident enough user, and it so happened that I wanted to install smth that was packaged for debian. A reasonable person would, perhaps, write a pkgbuild that would unpack the .deb and install it's contents properly along with all the necessary dependencies. But not me, I installed dpkg. The package refused to either work or install complaining that the version of glibc was incorrect... So, I installed glibc from Debian's repos. After a few seconds my poor PC probably spent staring in disbelief at the sheer stupidity of the meatbag behind the keyboard, I was met with a reboot, a kernel panic, and a need to find another PC to flash an archiso to a flash drive ('cause ofc I didn't have one at the time).

Anyways, what are your stories?

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[–] HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Installed python3 before it was made the native python on the dist. Half broke everything, including apt & python. So I uninstalled it, and then everything was broken. Finally got python3 reinstalled, and lived with it kindof working & awful distribution updates.

I have finally freed myself of that prison last month, by nuking everything and starting fresh.

[–] martinb@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can have both python 2 and 3 on the system. It just depends upon which is the default as to how much you break it 👍 The symlink to /usr/bin/python is the important bit for most software. For deb-based at least, update-alternative is your friend.

[–] HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'll happily say I must have overlooked something, but I did try using update-alternatives. I don't remember all the nuts and bolts from the start, but it involves python3 and distribution upgrades. I spent a good number of nights over the years trying to unmess it up, and am happy to never think about it ever again.

[–] thedevisinthedetails@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago

There was definitely a time when python3 was not recommended and plenty of scripts weren't yet differentiating between the two. Everything was breaking back then.