Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!eecs.nwu.edu!phil From: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) Newsgroups: comp.sys.encore Subject: Re: Burned by Encore: /etc/format Message-ID: <1991Mar13.212619.8961@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> Date: 13 Mar 91 21:26:19 GMT References: <1991Mar5.010514.4544@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> <4095@merk.UUCP> <45555@ut-emx.uucp> Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News) Reply-To: phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) Organization: Northwestern University Lines: 56 Nntp-Posting-Host: pex.eecs.nwu.edu In article <45555@ut-emx.uucp>, clyde@ut-emx.cc.utexas.edu (Clyde W. Hoover) writes: |> How about "Reading The F&#!@%~ Manual" before starting up any program called |> "format" while super-user? I know, I know, its' simple enough to say... Okay. "man format"... ---------------- FORMAT(8S) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS FORMAT(8S) NAME format - disk partitioning and maintenance utility SYNOPSIS format [ -f command-file ] [ -l log-file ] [ -x data-file ] [ -d disk-name ] [ -t disk_type ] [ -p partition-name ] [ -s ] diskname... DESCRIPTION format enables you to format, label, repair and analyze disks on your Sun computer.... ---------------- Oh gee. That was "man format" on my *SUN*.... If you still don't get it, what I'm trying to say is that Sun has a "format" too, and it does something very very different from Encore's format. It does format the disk, but it also does just about everything else associated with disk maintenance. Am I to type "man cmdname" before typing every command as root to make sure that I don't have the wrong name because manufacturers can't agree on what programs in /usr/etc should do what? I freely admitted in my original post (by the way, did you even bother reading that?) that I had made a mistake by typing the wrong command. But I was enraged by the fact that a program as destructive as "format" would not at least ask you first "Are you sure you want to do this?" or "Do YOU know what you are doing?" Do you know what you have to do to format a disk with Sun's format? You type "format", you select a disk from a list it presents you, you type "format" again, at which point the program says: "Ready to format. Formatting cannot be interrupted and takes a long while. Continue?" William LeFebvre Computing Facilities Manager and Analyst Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Northwestern University