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Thread: What Happens When You Do “sudo rm -rf /”?

  1. #1
    Junior Member
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    What Happens When You Do “sudo rm -rf /”?

    Well, now you know

    http://www.linuxhaxor.net/2007/12/27...do-sudo-rm-rf/

    Seriously don't try this at home. Obviously in this video sudo was used because this was a debian based (most likely ubuntu?) system; that discourages login as root. If you are using any other kind of linux system and logged in as root, you won't be even prompt for a password before everything is gone.... gone... just gone...

    I always wanted to try this. Maybe I will try this on a virtual machine and post some screen shots.

  2. #2
    Senior Member isildur's Avatar
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    That is why some suggest that you alias rm -i for rm in your shell startup scripts.
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  3. #3
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
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    I've done this and the deltree one (where regardless there isn't a password) just because the machine pissed me off. I have working versions of my configuration files and complete back ups in two locations and multiple CDs, DVDs, and USB drives containing back ups for everything so really me running this does nothing more than give me something to do for 30 minutes while I'm reinstalling the OS and grabbing the files off my FTP server or other places.

  4. #4
    Senior Member wolfman1984's Avatar
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    That's not what happens when you run "rm -rf /" as root.

    Here, let me try it now....

    .....oh noes....

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  5. #5
    Just Another Geek
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    Tried to "clear" my boot sector once.. Made a slight mistake.. Cleared way to much.... including the partitiontable....

    System still ran, no problem.. Until you reboot....

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1024 count=10
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  6. #6
    AO übergeek phishphreek's Avatar
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    I've done that before.... kinda funny. I did it in a vmware session and had the session revert to a snapshot I had taken right before I did it. vmware is great for things like that. Kind of one of those instances where you're told not to press the red button but you just have to!
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