Linux Steam players should not move the Steam directory

Rick Moen rick at deirdre.net
Fri Jan 16 13:08:50 PST 2015


On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 9:36 AM, Ken Shaffer
<Kenneth_C_Shaffer at comcast.net> wrote:
> Any Steam players, note the danger of moving the Steam directory:
> http://www.neowin.net/news/moving-the-steam-folder-on-linux-is-causing-users-entire-file-systems-to-be-deleted
> ALL files owned by you from / on down will be removed.

Point 1:  That's a serious indictment of whoever wrote and maintains
steam.sh.  Worse, the comment just above the fatal script line proves
that someone knew it was a really bad idea:

358: # Scary!
359: rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*

This is particularly scary given that there's allegedly no provision
in the installer to specify the installation target, and I gather that
$STEAMROOT defaults to the root directory.

What can I say?  Gamer kiddies on stimulants should not be allowed to code.

http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

Point 2:  No Linux distro would have accepted this sort of
incompetence.  Y'all should be wary of going outside the distro
package maintenance regimes to install third-party software, as you
have little to no standard of quality assurance, and things like this
can and do happen.



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