I know that some of you might be curious about what happens when you try to eliminate every single file and directory inside the root directory of our linux box so I decided to make a video and save you the pain of having to reinstall your system. Here is what happens when you run rm -Rf /* as root. Here you can see the video:
You see the consequences are visible as soon started to execute this command set and if there are directories that are not eliminated. These directories as is the case /proc doesn't really exist in the hard drive, it is actually in the RAM thus it cant be deleted while /var and other directories contain subfolders or files that are actually located in some other memory filesystems like /var/tmp in my installation of Fedora.
August Actualization 21, 2012.
Post-analysis then rm-Rf /
Since I've been asked several times and many have speculated without really having tests I decided to find out what state the system was operating. What survived file and directories?
To answer this I just mounted the old hard drive on another linux install and ran find /mnt/oldhdd -type yielding results:
/mnt/oldhdd/
/mnt/oldhdd/sys
/mnt/oldhdd/dev
/mnt/oldhdd/var
/mnt/oldhdd/var/tmp
/mnt/oldhdd/run
/mnt/oldhdd/run/libgpod
/mnt/oldhdd/run/faillock
/mnt/oldhdd/run/setroubleshoot
/mnt/oldhdd/run/openvpn
/mnt/oldhdd/run/plymouth
/mnt/oldhdd/run/wpa_supplicant
/mnt/oldhdd/run/netreport
/mnt/oldhdd/run/mdadm
/mnt/oldhdd/run/cups
/mnt/oldhdd/run/cups/certs
/mnt/oldhdd/run/spice-vdagentd
/mnt/oldhdd/run/sepermit
/mnt/oldhdd/run/abrt
/mnt/oldhdd/run/console
/mnt/oldhdd/run/vpnc
/mnt/oldhdd/run/ppp
/mnt/oldhdd/run/blkid
/mnt/oldhdd/run/setrans
/mnt/oldhdd/run/utmp
/mnt/oldhdd/run/net-snmp
/mnt/oldhdd/run/lock
/mnt/oldhdd/run/lock/dmraid
/mnt/oldhdd/run/lock/lockdev
/mnt/oldhdd/run/lock/ppp
/mnt/oldhdd/run/NetworkManager
/mnt/oldhdd/run/saslauthd
/mnt/oldhdd/run/gdm
/mnt/oldhdd/run/gdm/greeter
/mnt/oldhdd/run/pptp
/mnt/oldhdd/proc
/mnt/oldhdd/boot
/mnt/oldhdd/media
/mnt/oldhdd/tmp
How come the exception of the / mnt / oldhdd / run / utmp are all directories.
Well, thank you for the video.
I see that befor restarting. the system isn’t completely altered. Have you tried if we can donwload and install yum and install the other stuf?
Actually the if you see the video you will notice that the menu is not readable along with some other details.
The
yumcommand gets deleted too so you cant install stuff back, not to mention that bash is missing too.I see :|