space-asterisk in bash killed my server Post: 302348593

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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers space-asterisk in bash killed my server Post 302348593 by treesloth on Friday 28th of August 2009 04:24:28 PM

08-28-2009

Registered User

space-asterisk in bash killed my server

So, here's the deal... I was attempting to type this:

Code:

>  grep -R "searchterm" *

and somehow I typed this instead:

Code:

>  grep -R "searchterm"

>   *

I accidentally typed "space-asterisk" on the second prompt. This apparently caused Bash to attempt to run the first file in the pwd, which happened to have *something* that spawned a load of processes and killed my server (a VPS with fixed process count). I've never seen this. Can anyone explain the "space-asterisk" phenomenon? It seems like the sort of thing that's a subset of a bigger form of command line trickery and awesomeness, but I can't seem to put together the right search terms to get Dr. Google to explain it to me...

treesloth

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LEARN ABOUT ULTRIX

zgrep

ZGREP(1)						      General Commands Manual							  ZGREP(1)

NAME

       zgrep - search possibly compressed files for a regular expression

SYNOPSIS

       zgrep [ grep_options ] [ -e ] pattern filename...

DESCRIPTION

       Zgrep  invokes  grep  on  compressed  or  gzipped  files.   These  grep	options  will  cause  zgrep  to  terminate  with  an  error  code:
       (-[drRzZ]|--di*|--exc*|--inc*|--rec*|--nu*).  All other options specified are passed directly to grep.  If no file is specified,  then  the
       standard input is decompressed if necessary and fed to grep.  Otherwise the given files are uncompressed if necessary and fed to grep.

       If the GREP environment variable is set, zgrep uses it as the grep program to be invoked.

EXIT CODE

       2 - An option that is not supported was specified.

AUTHOR

       Charles Levert (charles@comm.polymtl.ca)

SEE ALSO

       grep(1), gzexe(1), gzip(1), zdiff(1), zforce(1), zmore(1), znew(1)

																	  ZGREP(1)