• riodoro1@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    185
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    --no-preserve-root is a security option to keep you from accidentally removing all your files. Make sure you always use it along side the -f option and -r which stands for rescue - meaning rm will create a rescue copy of the deleted data.

    • darcy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      1 year ago

      the / means ‘working directory only’, a security feature to prevent accidently using absolute paths.

      • droans@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        37
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        -r means delete recursively. rm will by default only remove files, but with this flag, it’ll also delete all the folders, subfolders, and the files in those.

        --no-preserve-root disables a security check. A few years ago, this flag didn’t exist. If you ran rm -r /, everything on your system would be deleted, provided the user had permissions. Now, / is treated specially and rm will refuse to perform a recursive delete on it without the --no-preserve-root flag.

        -f means force and disables any prompts.

        rm -rf --no-preserve-root / would delete every file on your system.

      • Hildegarde@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        –no-preserve-root

        disables the wipe your system protection. Without this option rm can only wipe current directory if you input / as a location.

        -f

        means force, will not prompt the user for any reason.

        -r

        means recursive, rm will enter any directory selected and delete all the contents.

        rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

        The above command WILL wipe your system. It will delete all files your user has access to, and it will give you no feedback warning you what’s going on. Be careful.

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh jeebus! Hahaha. Thank you so much for the explanation! I am extremely careful in terminal. I don’t find myself there often now that I’ve got my web apps set up.

          Now to learn how to successfully install something using Docker… There’s so many VARIABLES in Portainer to get something installed! I have not had one success as of yet, but I’m only on my first week of learning. Got it running as a file server successfully, though!

          Every TV in my house now gets King of the Hill RANDOMIZER and it’s bliss.

    • haulyard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some poor soul is going to take this to the bank and have a horrible day. You could have at least told them to use the -p flag to protect any critical system files from being removed.