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Remember kids, you gotta use
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /*now a days!rm -rf /*will work just fine (assuming sudo permissions ofc)You need the additional flag for
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /What is that for?
Too many people got trolled into “removing the French language pack” on Linux systems that there’s now a check to see if someone is deleting every file off their computer (including the os system files). --no-preserve-root is the option you need to include to actually delete all the files off your system.
weird how it doesn’t warn you for rm -rf /* though
depending on your shell, i believe the glob is expanded before it gets to the
rmprogram
Contrary to the memes, Linux does actually sometimes try to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot
Yes, do as I say!Every time I get one of these even if I 100% feel like I know what I’m doing it strikes a deep fear in me
Overrides the protection in place that prevents you from deleting the root of your filesystem.
One of my colleagues managed to accidentally run something like
rm -rf /var/tmp/ *on a Solaris machine that was the mail server for the entire organisation.After the command finished they realised that the inadvertent space in front of the asterisk meant that the command did slightly more damage than intended.
They were told to leave the machine running to be able to fix it from a backup, but they rebooted instead.
An open file is still usable even after it’s been deleted, so the kernel and shell were still up and running … before the reboot …
If I recall, it took weeks to fix, involving floppy disks, Sun engineers and much egg on face.
