Rosemary McGillicuddy wrote:
Ha! That reminds me. Once upon a time I used to run a UNIX support department for a big distributor, and we had our own public access ftp server with patches and drivers on it. Anyway, one fine day, I was logged in as "root", fiddling around in a subdirectory, and then I typed "cd", and <enter>, and then someone must have distracted me, and then I typed "rm *" and pressed <enter>.
Is that not so ? I read somewhere about a command that could wipe out your whole system if done as root. Something to do with r and rm and -r I think ...
The CLI is not something to be feared.
cheers
Duncan
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Rosemary
PS Not that I am about to do anything so outrageous :-)
Since this was an old UNIX box, "cd" on its own takes you to the "/" directory. "root" does not have its own home as on Linux.
OOPS!
Not only did that UNIX box not have its own /root home directory, but it also lacked a separate /boot or /stand directory, so I had just managed to remove the kernel "/unix" and the boot program "/boot".
DOUBLE OOPS!
Fortunately, I kept my wits about me, and quickly mounted an installation boot floppy from which I copied the "/boot" program, then I relinked the kernel, which produced a new "/unix" file, while praying that we did not have a power failure.
Phew! None of my support technicians noticed a thing! I reckon I would have been a bit embarrassed if they had.
Incidentally, the command you were talking about "rm -r" is absolutely lethal when run as "root" in the root directory.
cheers Duncan
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