A list of things not to do remotely on servers

This is a list of things that has actually happened to me, one of my colueges or someone else that I know (In no particular order).

1. On a Gentoo box:
   

   # vi /var/lib/iptables/rules-save
   ...
   # /etc/init.d/iptables reload
    * Flushing firewall...                                                   [ ok ]

   The rest of the output never came. Should have been
   

    * Loading iptables state and starting firewall...
    * Restoring iptables ruleset                                             [ ok ]

   This resulted in 2 hours on the road for 5 minutes worth of work.
2. # yes | make oldconfig && make && yes | make install modules_install && reboot
   Some features can break you kernel, and since /boot wasn't mounted the kernel was broken - luckily the old kernel was used since grub was in use and the new kernel got installed in the wrong location (took a while to figure out why the kernel version stayd the same).
3. # emerge depclean
   Forgetting the -av to this one can be deadly.
4. emerge packages on a live server with little or no memory can be extremely deadly. I didn't have physical access - took me just over 12 hours to get the server back to an usable state from the point where I realised there is a problem (this was a long night).
5. # emerge -uav glibc
   # logout
   breaks sshd.
6. # shutdown -h now
   This happens. Especially when you are working on the local machine and the server simultaniously.
7. # /etc/init.d/net.eth0 stop
   or
   # ifconfig eth0 down
   Not good.
8. # init 1
   Not unless net.eth0 or networking or whatever your system refers to for the networking stuff is in runlevel 1.
9. # killall sshd
   I'll let you imagine the consequences if the server is in a DC that is 60km away ...

Actually I should consider myself lucky that not more things has broken on me or my colueges (There is probably a few that I cannot recall atm).