Oracle Database 11g—Underground Advice for Database Administrators

Avoiding major blunders

• Don't use rm -rf *.* for any reason at anytime, do rm *.log or *.lis or *.trc: It is safer to back up a directory and use rmdir instead. It would be even better if you renamed the entire directory and left it in place renamed for a day or two.
• Assuming that all of the datafiles in a certain directory only pertain to one database is a recipe for disaster, those files can be created anywhere on the filesystem as long as Oracle has write access.
• Modifying access for a production instance at the SQL*Plus level is unusual and generally not granted to programming staff unless there is a single point of accountability, such as a lead programmer.
• It is best to use the Unix utility called fuser against a database file before using ...