[RndTbl] rm -r crippled in Red Hat 8

Gilbert E. Detillieux gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca
Mon Jul 12 12:01:28 CDT 2004


According to millward:
> In /root/.bashrc  I prefixed '#'  thus:
> #alias rm='rm -i'
> Now it's just fine. I can do rm - r
> and wipe out my entire system!

Which is exactly why the define the above alias for the root account.
I'd strongly advise against removing or commenting out that alias,
unless you're very careful in using the "rm" command, or like reinstalling
your system when you do run into problems.  ;)

As another member pointed out, you can use the "-f" option to force the
removal, which overrides the prompting that gets enabled by the "-i" option.
At least this way, you'll hopefully think about it more before you use it,
and might be less likely to accidentally wipe out something you didn't want
to.  (Of course, if you start using the "-rf" options out of habit, it kind
of becomes a moot point.)

By the way, this isn't something unique to Red Hat 8, nor to more recent
versions.  Those aliases (on "cp" and "mv" as well) have been there on
previous Red Hat versions as far back as I can remember).

-- 
Gilbert E. Detillieux		E-mail:	<gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Computer Science	Web:	http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/
University of Manitoba		Phone:	(204)474-8161
Winnipeg, MB, CANADA  R3T 2N2	Fax:	(204)474-7609



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