rm(1) bug, possibly serious

[Jan Grant]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Oliver Fromme wrote:

> Note that the command "rm -rf ../" was entered twice.
> The first time I got an error message (and exit code 1),
> the second time it apparently succeeded.

Check the man page for rm:

   -f          Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirma-
                 tion, regardless of the file's permissions.  If the file does
                 not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the
                 exit status to reflect an error.

That's what's happening the second time through. The first time, your 
current directory is getting removed (so ../ won't refer to a real 
directory the second time around). The bug is really in rm(1)'s initial 
diagnostic message.



-- 
jan grant, ISYS, University of Bristol. http://www.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44 (0)117 3317661   http://ioctl.org/jan/
We thought time travel was impossible. But that was now and this is then.