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That's pretty awesome! (For the sceptics, it indeed does no harm and can be interrupted at will)

• paul_f 14y ago
  Haha, good one. Here's another harmless command you can try. It's fun! sudo rm -rf /
  • crayola 14y ago
    I wouldn't joke with that.. Someone may actually try and lose a lot of time and data. Yes, most HN readers will get your 'joke', but possibly not all.
    • nivla 14y ago
      Its atleast disabled by default in latest versions of Ubuntu and other distros, but regardless paul_f shouldn't have posted it without any disclaimer.
    • Ao7bei3s 14y ago
      It'd teach them not to run random commands they found on the internet, what rm does, and to make backups. Three valueable lessons. That is, if it would actually work: modern rm implementations have a special case for /. Read the manpage and/or try this instead: rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
    • charliesome 14y ago
      If you blindly run code you find on the Internet without understanding what it does, you deserve all you get.
  • courtewing 14y ago
    In case anyone didn't know, this command would recursively remove all files and directories on the entire filesystem.
    • Ao7bei3s 14y ago
      No it [most likely] wouldn't. Read the manpage.
      • gizmo686 14y ago
        To clarify to anyone not fammilar with rm, running `rm /` is such a stupid thing to do, that rm has a special case where if won't let you delete "/". To override this behavior, you need the flag "--no-preserve-root".
• Myrmornis 14y ago
  > and can be interrupted at will Unless you're running tmux, obviously...