Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!daily-planet.concordia.ca!stefanos
From: stefanos@concour.cs.concordia.ca (KIAKAS stefanos)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: can you initialize the HD from the workspace manager disk option (help)
Message-ID: <562@daily-planet.concordia.ca>
Date: 24 Jun 91 16:51:25 GMT
References: <556@daily-planet.concordia.ca> <17688@helios.TAMU.EDU> <1991Jun24.005935.18747@ni.umd.edu>
Sender: usenet@daily-planet.concordia.ca
Organization: Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
Lines: 62

In article <1991Jun24.005935.18747@ni.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes:
>In article <17688@helios.TAMU.EDU> cnh5730@maraba.tamu.edu writes:
>
>>Hope you had your data backed up. And I'm sure we all really hope NeXT changes 
>>this "feature" in some future version of the OS.
>
>Oh, come now.  
>
>If you log in as root to do routine tasks, you are playing with a
>loaded gun.  Presumably we should remove the 'rm' command because
>someone might inadvertantly delete /sdmach, that big file that takes
>up all that space?
>
>Let's not build a system that's so "safe" you can't get your work
>done.  If you lock up all of the power tools, who's going to use them?
>
>louie

louie, in the User's Reference manual chapter 9 ( page 168 )
the disk menu is supposed to work with (to quote)

   "These commands apply to a removable disk - floppy or optical -
    that you've inserted in your computer."

i have a station, therefore no optical disk. therefore this should have,
as a default, applied only to the floppy disk not my hard disk.

this is obviously a bug. no one suggested that we build a system so safe
to make it difficult to use, but when a command
is documented as doing one thing and it does another then this is a bug and
should be fixed.

my system is a 8M 200M station running OS 2.1. here is a brief description
of the events that lead to this.

    - i used tar to move files from a sun sparc to the next
            tar -xvf /dev/rfd0b <files>
    - did not eject disk
    - moved from the terminal to the workspace manager to format
      the disk
    - selected the Disk Menu
         when it appeared, i could only invoke the initialize command
         not the eject command. i invoked the initialize command and
         assumed, as described in the documenttation, that it would initialize
         the floppy. it did not occur to me that it would initialize the
         hard disk.
    - this situation occured several times but i never wanted to initialize
      a disk before

now i have a few question to ask the unix gurus. i've only had my machine
for a few days before this happened.
   - when i get my system up and running is there a way to put the OS,
     that is on my hard disk, on floppies so i can reinstall it without
     waiting for next?
     ( it took 8 weeks to get my station from the time i ordered it )
   - is there a way to make the system ask for your root password, even
     if you are logged in as root, before it initializes the hard disk?
     (it is not often that people want to initialize their hard disks so
      i don't think this will be an inconvenience.)

                                 thanx,
                                   stef