Protection from the dreaded "rm -fr /"
Sam
sah at softcardsystems.com
Tue Oct 5 09:03:27 PDT 2004
>> As for protecting against "rm -rf / foo" as a typo for "rm -rf /foo", I
>> don't mind if we offer protection against that; but I see no reason at all
>> to "protect" root from "rm -rf /". It's fair to say that somebody who
>> types that means it, and it's fair to go as far as we can in satisfying it.
>
> I think you just nailed it on the head right here... if you say "rm -rf /"
> you probably mean it, but if you say "rm -rf / foo" you probably oopsed
> (pretty good bet, since rm / makes asking to rm foo redundant). How about
> checking if there is more than one argument, and if one of those arguments is
> "/", fail. If there is only one argument, even if it is "/", assume the user
> knows what he is doing and proceed normally.
Why not let -i override -f? Then the usual alias bit works
fine for those who want it. For times when you really want
the -f, you can type /bin/rm -rf. Or `which rm` -rf. Or
put it in a shell script and call it rmf.
There are a lot of ways to skin this properly without resorting
to hacks making the tool smarter than the user.
Sam
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