Maybe add a bash function to check the path and ask the magic question: "Do you really want to delete the dir XYZ in root@domain.com?" .... but then again when you're in panic mode you might either misread the host or hit 'y' without really reading what's in front of you.
The best thing to do is to never operate with 2 terminals simultaneously, when one of them is a production env, better login/logout or at least minimise it.
The problem in this case was that YP confused the host. YP thought he was operating in db2 (the host that went out of sync) and not db1 (the host that held the data), a message that doesn't display the current host wouldn't help in this case.
Indeed. That's happened on our systems as well. Someone issued a reboot on what they thought was a non-critical host, and instead they did it on some very essential host. The host came up in a bad state, and critical services did not start (kerberos....).
It lead to a "Very Bad Day". I found out about it after reading the post mortem.
One day, I almost accidentally shut off our master DB so I could update it. It's funny.. I leave these types of tasks for later in the day because I'm going to be tired and they're easy & quick tasks. But that almost backfired on me that day; I read the hostname a few times before it fully hit me that I wasn't where I was supposed to be.
The best thing to do is to never operate with 2 terminals simultaneously, when one of them is a production env, better login/logout or at least minimise it.