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Easy done eh, I guess this highlights how powerful root users are, Of course this raises one point of how best to actually stop such a thing once it's started, closing a terminal window is a good thing but what happens if you are running yakuake which seems to be in the background, I can type a command, click the desktop, the window scrolls up but it's still running in the background this is useful but i guess highlights a potentual danger of using sudo or even su as I do. Whats the best key combo to get out of this situation, apart from hitting reset of course, which could end up doing more damage. paul h Rob Beard wrote: >Hi folks, > >I thought you guys might find this amusing. It is a warning that even >running commands with sudo can be dangerous! > >I was trying to delete some files from my USB pen drive this morning. >For some funny reason I couldn't delete a couple of files out of the >Trash can (I'm running Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 Beta). I figured, okay I >haven't got time to mess around so I opened up a terminal, changed to >the USB key directory and ran... > >rm -fr .Trash-Rob > >Great I thought, that's the trash emptied (it was complaining about a >permissions problem which I considered strange on a FAT formatted >device!). > >I then wanted to do something else in the terminal window, I think it >was checking the MD5SUMs of Ubuntu Edgy that I had downloaded. > >I entered cd / and pressed enter. Unfortunately I think, I'd hit the >up arrow key a second before so I actually entered the command... > >rm -fr .Trash-Rob cd / > >Good old Ubuntu remembered my password on the sudo command as I'd >previously entered it a few seconds before. Before I knew it I was >rm'ing everything from / downwards! > >Luckily I caught it in time (Ctrl-C didn't respond) so I closed the >terminal window. I think it only deleted /bin /sbin /boot and /etc as >my data appears to be intact. Not ideal as I'll have to reinstall but >still its not the end of the world I guess. Just as well I downloaded >the Edgy ISO's now :-) > >So I guess the moral of the story is even when running sudo, think >before pressing Enter (or at least when using the rm command don't do >rm -fr!). > >Rob > > > > > > -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html