When they say 'Run rm -rf /*'

Make backups!

To remove directory named '-f' use this: rm -r ./-f

In this video Web User struggles to remove a Linux directory named -f. He asks for help on a Discord server. BIG CAT trolls him by telling to run the command, which remove all files on the computer. Web User did it and instantly regretted doing this. He asks hakcer for help, and he recovers his files using photorec tool. Hakcer looked through the recovered files and was kind of shoked.

[Reavenk]

When Pixar was making ToyStory 2, legend has it that an errant command line wiped all of the movie assets and almost deleted the entire production of the movie. Then they realized a stay-at-home mom had a local backup at her house, and after restoring it they only lost 2 weeks of work instead of everything.

[ngdogcc]

If I had a coin for every time I have made a backup, I'd have zero coins.
If I had a coin for every time I needed a backup, I'd have 5 coins 💀

[someonestolemyname]

Things you shouldn't do
- run shell as root
- running stranger's code without checking what it does especially as root
- not backing up your data
- using rm without safeguard especially with -r and -f flags
- not using gio trash, trashcli or other trash utilities which you can recover from

[mathgeniuszach]

You could also just use "––".
In other words: "rm –r –– –f"
"––" tells the command parser to stop professing flags and treat everything else as arguments.

[prdlgyi]

The thing is... If you do backups and the disk where the backups are stored is still mounted, sudo rm -rf /* gonna delete it too💀

[john_swanson]

change the world my final message goodbye

[blank]

You should always take your PC's backup and store it on the same PC it saves a lot of space
Source: trust me brah

[godnyx]

The first part, gave me PTSD!!!! I once had a file in my home directory called "~".

GUESS what command I run to remove it!!!

[callisoncaffrey]

The guy didn't like. The -f folder was gone, wasn't it?
Edit: I meant "didn't lie" obviously.

[filipsr]

rtfm :)

POSIX.1-2008, volume "Base Definitions", section 12.1 "Utility Syntax Guidelines", item number 10: "The first -- argument that is not an option-argument should be accepted as a delimiter indicating the end of options. Any following arguments should be treated as operands, even if they begin with the '-' character."

[aya-hlbk]

"Ok, lemme just LiveCD in" Funniest thing here

[horsepowermultimedia]

Sudo rm -rf /* is the System32 deletion of Linux.

[georgewang]

Thanks! Your video content is the safest and most useful <3

[etaashmathamsetty]

Finally beluga but it's a Linux channel
U deserve more subs

[AgentPothead]

LMAO that Ducktales moon theme song hit out of no where.

[SodalisUK]

I actually had this happen on a real production IT system that I was working towards taking over the management of. I was working for an outsourcing company, and the system was in production and being operated and managed by the application vendor.

The reason we hadn't taken it over was because there was zero operational documentation and zero scripted operations. So the vendor was operating it manually based on instructions scribbled on a scrap of paper.

These instructions said: 1. "cd /tmp"; 2. "rm -yr *"; 3. "reboot".

Unfortunately, one evening having done step one, the operator received a telephone support call and as part of answering that he went root (presumably with "sudo -i" which put him back in the root directory). When he finished the call he executed steps 2 and 3 without exiting root thus doing EXACTLY what this video shows.

D'UH!!!

To cap it all, it then turned out that the system backups hadn't been working either and hadn't been tested and it took them 2 or 3 weeks to rebuild this production system. DOUBLE

I might add that this was one of two similar screw ups (the other resulting from deletion of the production SQL database) at the end of a disastrous fixed price application development where the system has already been rejected and redeveloped from scratch and where the initial go live was abandoned twice, once because an untested system timezone change caused it to fail, and once because the system has never been tested on a production sized database, and several missing indexes resulted in use response times on a linked production customer call healing system going from 1sec to over 30mins.

Put simply a fiasco from start to finish from a MAJOR MAJOR software house.

[martinhorner]

I didn't believe it was that hard to quote '-f' to rm as it was shown in the video. So I wrote a program to create an actual '-f'. Now I have to rm -rf /*

[spaceowl]

This was so emotional and inspirational

[chri-k]

would it be logical for rm -rf /.. to disintegrate everything connected to the system bus?

[realizer]

It has been decades but Take off and land still gets me