Man Deletes His Whole Company With One Bad Line of Code

www.popularmechanics.com ^ | Apr 14, 2016 144 | By Eric Limer

[loucon]

Are you sure? (yes or no)

[USMCPOP]

"rm -rf/" That's just shorthand for the obscene word he screamed afterward.

[loucon]

Y E S ... wait! I meant no! Oh no!

[brandon24]

I like this utility and have it on all of my servers
https://launchpad.net/safe-rm

It’s a good idea to always change into the subdirectory above when you need to do a recursive delete and not do it from the root /

cd /home/user/
rm example/ -Rf

Or another good idea is to always have the -Rf at the end of the command so you don’t actually fat finger it and run the command to early.

rm /home/user/example -Rf

[Brilliant]

Yeah. Uhm huh. I wonder what he was trying to hide.

[Secret Agent Man]

We know how to take them down!

Get on the lines to the others!

[Augie]

[null and void]

Carbonite!

[tophat9000]

Hooo that a scary concept

and actually I’ve done that because the company required it... long story

[A_Tradition_Continues]

I see a future for him managing servers and conveniently loosing data for the DNC. at the local IHOP.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

One word:

Several words. That command can only execute as described if it is run as root. Why was the script given root permissions?

Plus, anyone who has worked on the CLI on Unix or Linux sees that command as severe poison and will avoid it at all costs. In fact, it is even joked about..."You wanna fix it fast, just run rm -rf /...hahahaha"
If it HAS to be run, several steps are done before doing so. It is second nature to anyone familiar with Unix or Linux.

I can be sympathetic but this guy got what he deserved.

[dartuser]

And really ... its unlikely that was a line of code ... that is not really a command you would want to run in a piece of code or script ..

That is a shell command ...

The famous "Crap ... I shouldn't have done that!!" command ... lol

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

most if it should be recoverable

'Most' is a possibility but not a likelihood.
Once rm deletes the inode numbers it's brown trousers time.

[trfree98]

“rm -rf .” I can understand under the condition of a rational rsync copy regiment and only in your first year or two... But “rm -rf /”? Dude needs to be tested for serious drugs...

I hope he has serious insurance for negligence...

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Should cost him about $50 and about 4 hours depending on the size of the drives and backups, but he should be able to get everything back.

Really? We not be talking Winders here.

[Red Badger]

Carbonite?..........................After informing his 1500+ customers of his little mistake, he may need KEVLAR!.........................

[I want the USA back]

Lesson 1: UNIX commands are for nerds only.

[Red Badger]

Now?...........himself.........................

[Utilizer]

Remember the person named Hiram Dunne, whose face we’ll see no more
for what he had taken to be H2O, was H2SO4.

Some mistakes are more costly than others...

[mmichaels1970]

Really? We not be talking Winders here.

Not sure of the OS. I know ActiveUndelete has a version for Linux. Their "ultimate" version is $79.95.

Pretty nice software. I've made a few bucks recovering people's deleted camera flash drives ("all my prom photos are gone") type stuff. This software can even recover deleted partitions (never tried that though).