[mythtv-users] What NOT to do to your Myth box...

[tommy]

Ok, so this is pretty tragic, it's also amusing if you're a sick bastard 
like
me, I'm sure a few of you are and will get a laugh out of it so I 
thought I'd share
my story of what _not_ to do with your mythbox...

For xmas santa claus bought me an Athlon 64 3000 to replace my refurb 
emachine
mythbox. So I spend three days setting this thing up, I go out of my way to
migrate my tv from the emachine to the new amd, moving the database, setting
up all my remote controls, basically customizing the machine to my liking.
Finally I get it up and running, life is good, really good...

I have just setup a smoothwall box with the red/green/orange interfaces,
pretty cool stuff, now what to do with all this technology??? Well, I 
have the
refurb emachine laying around, I should put that on the orange interface and
set it up as my mail server/web server, what a good idea...

So now I have a web server but nothing to put on it... How about I replicate
my mythweb interface on the web server realtime so I can see whats going on
from work.. cool... So I hack up a little cgi script that looks like so:

#!/bin/bash
cd /var/www/localhost/htdocs
/usr/bin/wget -r http://vector/mythtv/status.php -q
cat /var/www/localhost/htdocs/cgi-responses/mythtv-status.html

and boom, I can now see my mythtv status from outside without putting the
machine on the internet, thats pretty cool, how about what I've 
recorded, that
would be even cooler! so I hack up another cgi-script, but instead of
status.php I get recorded_programs.php, should work right??

Well, I attempt to access the cgi script and it looks like my network
connection goes down, I cant access the mythbox any more, wtf? It finally
comes back and I'm looking for the cause, wtf just happened? I start top and
see sqld is going nuts, the throughput of wget is down to 3k/s on the local
network, wtf? wtf? I don't know, I'm going drinking, I'll let it sort itself
out I'll figure it out when I get home...

I get home from the pub only to find my room mate bitching that there is
something up with the mythbox... Well, I've had a few beers, there's 
nothing
wrong with it I tell him, you're on crack and off to bed I go...

Well I wake up this morning and look for the news and can't find it, 
well I'll
look for something else to watch, then I look a little closer, the 
listing has
changed, wtf?

Well my friends, I'll tell you WTF!!!!! remember yesterday when I ran the
recorded programs version of the cgi script? well it seems wget spidered the
links on recorded_programs.php, sounds innocent enough until you realise 
that
the last link on every line is DELETE!!! Yes my friends, the script went
through and deleted my ENTIRE BOX!!!

Over half a terrabyte of television GONE!!!

The entire season of Rescue Me, GONE!!!!!
A couple of seasons of The Sheild, GONE!!!!
Every episode of Lost, GONE!!!!
a couple of seasons of Enterprise, GONE!!
You get the picture...

bash-2.05b$ ssh -l root -C -p 23 ?????.dyndns.org
Password:
Last login: Thu Jan 13 08:22:59 2005 from bulwark.??????.com
perigee root # rm /var/www/localhost/cgi-bin/mythtv-recorded_programs.cgi
perigee root #

It's just way too powerful of a script to have laying around...

That my friends is what not to do to your mythbox... Beware the darkside of
wget...

Feel my pain...


Machine information
Disk Usage:

    * Total Space: 1144,000 MB
    * Space Used: 29,233 MB
    * Space Free: 1114,767 MB

This machine's load average:

    * 1 Minute: 0.53
    * 5 Minutes: 0.71
    * 15 Minutes: 0.24

Last mythfilldatabase run started on 2005-01-13 03:13 and ended on 
2005-01-13 03:13. Successful.
There's guide data until 2005-01-25 22:00 (12 days).
DataDirect Status: Your subscription expires on 02/20/05 23:57:57