Have you ever managed to type reload in the wrong terminal window and brought down a core switch (I probably did)? I managed to do the Ubuntu equivalent of that stupidity: I told my main Ubuntu server to sudo poweroff instead of doing that to a Vagrant VM.

Fortunately, the open-source world doesn’t have to rely on the roadmaps created by networking vendors’ product managers; if there’s a big enough pain, someone will solve it.

It took me seconds to find the molly-guard¹ Ubuntu package. It intercepts all reboot-related commands, checks whether you’re on an SSH session, and asks for the hostname you want to reboot/power off:

$ sudo poweroff
W: molly-guard: SSH session detected!
Please type in hostname of the machine to poweroff: ^C
Good thing I asked; I won't poweroff brick2 ...

We’ve been rebooting the wrong Cisco IOS boxes for decades, and they still lack an equivalent mechanism. Even worse, I don’t remember ever seeing a reboot molly-guard on a networking device². Have I missed something? Please leave a comment.