Comments on: And what exactly will sudo rm -rf do? http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/ K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:19:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Ben Dibell http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-42876 Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:30:37 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-42876 You need to umount /sys and /proc before doing this, or things like that will happen. It’s best to do this from a livecd with nothing mounted.

]]> By: Ben Dibell http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-42875 Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:27:31 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-42875 It’s not possible to remove “/” itself, anyway. To get past this, issue rm -rf /* instead. Honestly, it’s no pandemic. These people told their penguins to commit suicide, and they are somehow surprised they are dead. rm -rf / IS SUPPOSED to do this. Anyway, if you want fireworks, rm -rf /* will do the trick. Unmount any drives you still love, my friend. >:-)

]]> By: Howto: File a bug report on Launchpad « Motho ke motho ka botho http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-41181 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:34:30 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-41181 [...] so why did you file your complaint about coreutils and the rm -rf default as a bug report and not a feature request?” you ask. Simple: That behavior destroys an [...]

]]> By: ATOzTOA http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-40776 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:04:07 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-40776 Ha… I knew it… :)

]]> By: Blue Peppers http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-40742 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:45:39 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-40742 @igknighted:

For the cops, you want shred /dev/sda (or whatever your partition is

]]> By: William http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-38058 Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:08:15 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-38058 Interesting. By adding on a * at the end, THEN the fireworks start…without the *, it’s like there’s no match to start the fuse. I tried the command sudo rm -rf / in Ubuntu 6.10, and the system was hosed. I tried it in openSUSE. “rm: cannot remove the directory ‘/’” Then I added the * to the end. I got an error message that said “could not load application”, then the fireworks started. It even went as far as remove the default cursor and replace it with a black pointer with a clock as the “loading” sign. After rebooting. the Virtual Machine wouldn’t load GRUB, because the files weren’t there…

]]> By: robsku http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-37319 Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:49:47 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-37319 Deliberately using the f-parameter for force-removal and then complaining that the system does not protect itself from removal, huh? Well, maybe if you would not enter command as root and then use all parameters possible to make sure that your command is run without disturbing you with questions and forced to do without you told, maybe then the system would in fact have some protection from removing itself…

If you however want a system that does not give you the full power to do *anything you want* even if intentionally requested but want the system to never let you do certain things – Well, in that case Unix systems are not for you and you might be happyer in windows-land.

]]> By: Fix released, I win « Motho ke motho ka botho http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-37303 Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:32:49 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-37303 [...] I win Published October 4, 2008 Linux , Ubuntu , Ubuntu Forums This is for all the haters, the trolls, the Unix elitists and self-appointed Linux experts, the old-school Unix purists, [...]

]]> By: Ferdinand http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-30824 Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:03:57 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-30824 Hi,

I think that this is the right behavior because you can’t delete the root directory.

If you do ‘rm -rf /usr’ you delete the usr directory. ‘cd /usr’ will give ‘No such file or directory’.
If you could do ‘rm -rf /’ you don’t delete / but only the files and directory in it. ‘cd /’ is still posible.

Just checking:
$ rm -ri .
rm: cannot remove `.’ or `..’

Makes sens too.

Note: Changed -f to -i because i’m a coward :-)

]]> By: Karim http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-30807 Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:55:59 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/and-what-exactly-will-sudo-rm-rf-do/#comment-30807 The last time I “Accidentally” used:
#rm -rf /
was on RedHat 7.3, and the results were not pretty…
i was trying to do “./” as opposed to “/”, and I happened
to have my other 2 partitions:
1) Windows XP
2) Data
which both happened to be fat32, mounted….. yeah
suffice to say, that was an “all-nighter” and then
some. :P

Karim

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