How I messed up by accidentally replaying all my keystrokes from the last few days

isti115@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 408 points – Nerf dynamic macros (how I messed up by running one that has been recording for days) · Issue #595 · jtroo/kanata
github.com

After getting a comment from the creator of kanata (an awesome piece of software by the way) that he found my story amusing, I figured that I'd also post it here, partly as fun, partly as a cautionary tale. Also, I'd appreciate any tips as to what to check for in my system, it's a weird feeling to know that some stuff might have been messed up under the hood.

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Just reading, my first instinct was, "Yank the fucking cable, oh lawd!!!"

I hope I would be that reactionary in the situation, but as you said, you were confused and panicked and the thought didn't occur until after. I guess I won't know unless until it happens to me one day.

He did say his keystrokes were playback in a few seconds. No way you realize what is happening and yank the cable this fast. This is the type of situation where people sit and watch the chaos unfold

Well he had time to ssh in from his phone and type a command

Oh man, did that feel like a long time until I managed to get there... Adding insult to injury was that every step took two tries. First I didn't type my username for ssh, which resulted in the default termux user being used, so I had to cancel that and try again. After that I tried pkill kanata, which responded with killing pid ... failed: Operation not permitted, which made me realize, that it's running as root, so I need to use sudo to stop it.

All this time I was hammering C-c with my other hand and keeping an eye on the screen as well to see what is happening. 😶

I would like to think that I would react better if that happened to me but I know that I would fumble in the worst ways possible, so I feel you

Yes, this keyboard idea was quite a rollercoaster, because at first I blamed myself for not pulling it, but then I realized, that it wouldn't have helped even if I did, as Kanata keeps running just fine with the bound input device removed. 🙃

(Edit: Oh, sorry, you meant the power cable! 🤦‍♂️)

I think they meant pull the power cable out 😬

Oh, sorry, I must've been replying to a keyboard related comment earlier and got the context mixed up in my head! 🤦‍♂️

I've had instances of stuff happening without my input (never malicious, just a messed up input device or some weird stuff getting buffered) and power cycling has always been my first instinct. Power down, remove all peripherals and network connections, power back up, start diagnosing.

So yay me, I guess?

Sometimes Windows (on laptop) decides to drop a key release, meaning I have to figure out how to restart while (e.g.) Esc is being held down.

I find yanking power cables tends to pretty reliably power cycle a device.

I mean, yeah, it can also make your storage a bit upset, but rarely in a major way and if you are not in control of your machine that's still the lesser evil, potentially. Especially if you back up your data.

Laptop, so it's a bit harder to pull the power cable. The default power button behavior is to hibernate, which usually finishes shutting down before a hard shutdown can trigger and doesn't fix that.

Fair enough. In my mind I was all "pull the battery", and then I remembered I'm old and it's not 15 years ago. I guess at that point you're stuck holding the button for however long it takes to force a hard shutdown in your system.

After the first few times of me spilling coke, coffee, water and what not on my laptops and open case PCs I have it ingrained in me. Anything, ANYTHING goes wrong - plug that thing off ASAP. It's a learned reflex at this point.