Re: scripting question
On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 05:45:35PM -0800, Andy wrote:
> On Tuesday 15 April 2003 05:13 pm, Scott Henson wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-04-15 at 20:40, nate wrote:
> > > rm -rf *
> >
> > Do me a favor. Try this on your system as root. Then walk a way
> > and come back an hour later. Youll need another system to tell us
> > what happened cause yours will be hosed. This command will
> > generally delete your entire file system. Trust me, Ive done a form
> > of it before(mv *).
>
> I have used rm -rf * as root before and it did not kill my system.
>
> If you are sitting in / then yes, I can see how it would take you
> down hard.
There's an amusing defence against that: 'touch /--version'. Then 'rm
-rf *' in / expands to 'rm -rf <stuff> --version <more stuff>', and does
nothing except print its version number and copyright information.
Won't work on all Unices, though, won't defend you against other
damaging actions, and obviously isn't a substitute for care when using
the root account, but I occasionally do it just for insurance anyway. :)
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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