Back in the day when Novell networks were hot and 20M was a big drive, I discovered an new utility. It was called pkarc and it compressed files - way cool! So I had to try it out on our Novell server. pkarc had a bunch of nifty options one of which -m moved files into the archive file, in other words deleted them.

Well I kicked it off and it cranked away for a while and then I started getting the aforementioned calls. "I can't login". "I can't get to my files" etc. I soon discovered I had included the -m switch - doh! Fortunately I didn't panic. I prayed that pkarc was as good as it sounded and it would let me restore everything. It took hours and made a very stressful day for me but I recovered all the files except one.

It was the login executable! So even though the network files were back no could login. I started looking around and found an install disk with the file, I copied it to the right place and voila! We were back in business.

I can't say I have never made another mistake, but that experience made me a much more cautious person.

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