• neidu3@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    Short answer: Nothing

    Long answer: It is part of a command that deletes everything. The only thing missing is the argument specifying what to delete. Examples:

    rm -rf *
rm -rf /some/directory

    It’s somewhat (in)famous because it’ll do so without asking for confirmation. The only exception is rm -rf / on a modern distro which will complain that you’re attempting to delete EVERYTHING on the system. In the olden days it’d just do it, but these days it tells you to add --no-preserve-root as well if you really wish to do so.

  • remon@ani.social
    8·
    7 days ago

    It will delete everything in the directory after that, without asking for further confirmation.

    • 0xKeshara@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      9·
      7 days ago

      Unless it’s on /, where preserve-root should be kicking in, unless the bypass flag is used (can’t remember this one)

      • Havatra@lemmy.zipEnglish
        7·
        7 days ago

        Not all systems have the preserve-root flag enforced, actually… I accidentally did the rm -rf / in a bash script (the variable for the path returned empty), and it irreversibly deleted a bunch of my system, including sudo and a big part of /etc, before I realized and did Ctrl+C. However the damage was done, rendering the system both unusable and unbootable. Fortunately I managed to recover some data, as the drive was not encrypted.

        Edit: Yes, like a fool I ran the script as sudo… I am now older and wiser.

        • toynbee@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          I didn’t personally do this one, but I once worked at a job where I was tasked with updating a kickstart file from RHEL6 to 7. I don’t remember the details, but in the postscript, there was a variable that was set in 6 but not 7. That variable was then used in a command like rm -rf /${variable}.

          It took me a little while to figure out why every system imaged with that kickstart was emptying its own filesystem.

          • Havatra@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            6 days ago

            Iirc, it was Debian 10 (Buster). I thought they enforced it (rm did support it at the time), but perhaps it was tricked by using an empty variable or something?

            • 0xKeshara@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              2·
              6 days ago

              Ahhh, I just re-read your comment, and yeah that would have been the case.

              I think another quick bypass without using the proper flag could be to use a wildcard (for example, rm -rf /*), I think that might work too maybe

    • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
      52·
      7 days ago

      No, it does nothing.

      $ mkdir test
$ cd test
~/test$ touch 1 2 3 4 5
~/test$ rm -rf
~/test$ ls
1  2  3  4  5

      If you dont specify the -f option, which among other things tells rm to be quiet, it throws an error:

      $ rm -r
rm: missing operand
Try 'rm --help' for more information.
      • remon@ani.social
        21·
        7 days ago

        Because you’re using it on nothing.

        $ mkdir test
$ cd test
~/test$ touch 1 2 3 4 5
~/test$ cd ..
$ rm -rf test
$ ls

        No more test folder.

          • remon@ani.social
            32·
            7 days ago

            What are you talking about? The does exactly what I said it does.

            It only does nothing for you because you used it incorrectly (in the wrong folder without the required argument).

  • AstroLightz@lemmy.world
    81·
    7 days ago

    You have it backwards.

    rm -fr /* removes the French language pack that comes preinstalled on your system.

    /j