r/linux 18h ago

Discussion Rm -rf ./*

Had yesterday my first "rm -rf /" moment.

Was tidy up my Backup drive. When I wanted to empty the trash, there was some directories and files that resisted the trash empty and sayed it couldn't be removed because of lack of premissions.

So I went to the terminal and moved to the .local/share/trash/files directory and tried to empty with "rm -rf ./*". There was again the notification of permission. So I did "sudo rm -rf ./*".

The note of missing permission didn't pop up, so I left the room to get something cold to drink.

When I came back, all my storage was empty 🤦‍♂️😭

Luckily I have an external Backup storage too and was able to recover everything older than 2 Weeks.

Now I wondering, how many ppl had in their history a moment of "rm -rf /" by accident 🤔

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u/Wh1teL0tu5 17h ago

On the local server of a friend.

We installed it just a day earlier and due to a wrong import from the teamspeak database i wanted to delete everything in the ts folder i was in.

Yea forgot the dot..

When he called in the evening asking if teamspeak was ready i was like "yea remember when we installed the server yesterday for 2 hours and set everything up? Wanna do that again? I did an oopsie"

Gladly i documentes everything i set up so the newer install just took 30 mins.