Important Linux tip

[strangely brown]

Never do a rm -rf /* whilst su'd...

 

[TdC]

I did that once to find out if it really would happen. it did

 

[xane]

Older versions of UNIX had a nasty habit of creating a file called "*" (asterisk), with the inevitable result when you tried to remove it without thinking first.

 

[sibanac]

hehe we used to do a mkdir /* on test systems then see what idjut would try to remove it.

I once did the rm -rf /* myself, well havent we all.
I rescued most of the system by a quick ^c.

 

[Clown]

What does this do then?

 

[sibanac]

What does this do then?

erase all mounted filesystems.


btw putting 'stty erase e' in sameone his profile is always good for 15 mins of fun

 

[strangely brown]

What I actually trying to do was to delete all temporary hidden files:-

rm -rf .*

Which bright spark put the / and the . keys next to each other (on UK keyboards at least)?

For some reason it didn't touch my /home partition so I didn't lose all my data (although I guess I deserved to)...

Spent most of yesterday and this morning re-installing...

 

[xane]

What I actually trying to do was to delete all temporary hidden files:-

rm -rf .*

Which bright spark put the / and the . keys next to each other (on UK keyboards at least)?

Probably the same bright spark who blindly puts the -r (recursive) flag on all his commands even when they are trying to remove files not directories.

Tsk, damn those UNIX programmers who assume people think before they act.

 

[TdC]

alias ls rm -rf



or something

 

[strangely brown]

Ok, I did mean to delete all the hidden directories as well as files - Just not the from the root...

Aliases are dangerous things - Especially when deleting. I used to have a rm -f one set up in cygwin on the 'doze partition... soon got rid of it!

 

[MrBlack]

Ah yes... always a fun one that. There's that brief moment of puzzlement when the job seems to be taking a bit too long for a simple file delete...

then the curiosity about why your HD is chuntering away ten to the dozen.

Then the grim realisation, and a furious attempt to hold ctrl and punch the C key through your desk. A lot.

Tehn you realise that it had only just managed to remove something pointless (like /lib or /etc) before you stopped it. Then you go all explodey and, oh I don't know, break your favourite coffee mug or something.

Not that this has ever happened to me before, oh no.

 

[phlash]

What I actually trying to do was to delete all temporary hidden files:-

rm -rf .*

That'll be how I managed to hose most of a Solaris system. I was logged in as root, in the /tmp directory when I decided to tidy up, typed: rm -rf .*, which of course matches '..' - you can guess the rest

Why are SCSI disks so fast??!!