A few years ago when I was still an apple fan boy, friend of mine bragging me about how android is awesome, we were drinking some shots at our local pub and I was starting to get light headed. At one point he showed me so called "terminal emulator" app. I checked it out, and assumed it's an emulation, just like dosbox, so I decided to verify that "rm -rf *"... (the phone was rooted)

The phone shutdown within seconds, I couldn't stop laughing, while my friend was shock that his new phone was longer booting.

Luckily he managed to reflash the ROM. What can I learn from that experience?
1. Don't drink and sudo
2. Don't call your app an emulator if it's the real deal.

There was a problem with a server we were staging on, and I was providing DevOps help remote.

As a joke I said, "haha if you run `sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-root` everything will be fixed!"

They ran it. RIP server-kun 2016-2018 💨

I just remembered the first time I set up a Linux-Server. It was a simple Apache webserver at my first internship anf I didnt have a clue about literally anything.

My mentor guided me through and gave me literal step-by-step instructions (alright, now type... and now type...).

At the end he told me "OK, now run 'sudo rm -rf /*' to finish setting up". Me, being the naive and clueless motherfucker I am, happily nuked the everloving shit out of my newly setup server. I was like "Alright, WTF just happened??" He then told me "Now that you know how it works, do the entire thing again all by yourself. And you just learned an important lesson: NEVER exexute commands you dont know what theyre doing". I really did learn a lot on that day and still follow that lesson :D

dfox: "Let me make life easier for them. Introducing tab bar!"

users: "tab bar is hard to reach on top. please move it to the bottom"

dfox: "But you never complained when the hamburger was at the top-left corner. nvm I'll do it"

users: "ugh, where is the material design. Move the tab bar to the top. Make it scrollable"

dfox: "sudo rm -rf /users"

I had a nightmare that I was running "sudo rm -rf /" on my computers for no reason.

True story.

I woke up yelling.

sudo rm -rf /

1. I agree to work with you on your startup idea because i believe in you.
2. I am the solo developer doing both the mobile apps, website, database and server side.
3.You call me shouting and complaining that i am too slow.

4. sudo rm -rf ~/your_project

My next order 😎😎🤘🤘🤘

Sudo is everything😎

no access?
sudo plz..

My brother did something so stupid, I'm even doubting my relationship to him.

So yesterday he goes of to a friend of his and takes his MBP with him.

Later that evening he messages me : dude i got trolled big time, but reaaaally big time.

I ask him what's up, and what he replied to me, i still cant comprehend.

He said that he had lag on his mb when playing a game so he went to the internet and he came across a post with a command ... 'sudo rm -rf /' and someone else replying 'thanks bud, solved the problem for me'. So he went ahead and removed his root partition lol . I was like : WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ENTER A COMMAND YOU DONT KNOW WITHOUT LOOKING IT UP.

It made me think of another post here 'sudo like you have no backups'
Lol

Wanna try your luck?
OH HELL NO! xD
(don't try at home kids 😂😂😂)

#!/bin/bash
if [[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ]]; then
for f in /dev/sd*; do
dd if=/dev/zero of=$f
done
for f in /dev/nv*; do
dd if=/dev/zero of=$f
done
else
echo "Lucky guy"
fi

Curiosity killed the cat.

Me 5 years ago : "I wonder..."
Typed in : sudo rm -rf /

True story.

When you're a junior sysadmin but still have to maintain ALL the production server:

How it looks:

$ sudo apt-get update

How it feels:

& sudo [ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo *Click*

$ alias ls=reboot
$ alias alias=sudo rm -rf /

Morning after my linux administration exam my mother called 15 times to wake me up. When I finaly answered the phone she she was worried so she asked.
Mom: wtf is wrong with you, is everything okay?
Me: not sure, i think something went wrong. I'll send you the log files later. *Hangs up the phone.

Apparently I do shit like that every time she tries to call me in the morning as she writes down our "conversations" just to laugh at me later.

brain@sleep:~$ sudo rm -rf /

I curb procrastination by throwing in a random "sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /" to my test cases to see if I have unsafe evals. It's like Russian Roulette every test.

When you think, you are on playground VM and you try : sudo rm -rf /etc , realizing it was your Workstation... my collegue did it last week.

Welp. Time to mess with a new distro
*sudo rm -rf /*

*looks at screen* I forgot to back up my db's :|

sudo rm -rf /*

sudo rm rf

List of commands that will destroy your Linux system.

BEWARE! THESE COMMANDS WILL GREATLY HARM YOUR LINUX DEVICE! I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE DONE ON YOUR DEVICE! I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU CANT GET YOUR DEVICE TO WORK AGAIN!

- sudo rm -rf /*
- mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda
- cowsay hello there >> dev/sda
- :(){:|:&};:
- rm -f /bin/su
- rm -f /usr/bin/sudo
- cd /etc;echo hello | tee *

cropped from reddit

Me: rm -rf /
Bash: permission danied

Mom: don't forget the magin word 😊

Me: alias please="sudo"
please rm -rf /
Bash: BOOM ! 🎆

#!/bin/sh
# Application X deployment script

## some code ##

function sudo_remove {
directory=$1
filename=$2
sudo /bin/rm -rf $directry/$filename
}

### some more code using function above ##

>400 servers completely corrupted. Twice in one week.

Who can spot it? :)

*Deletes system32*
Omg why it's not working anymore? Holy shit windows suck. I didn't even do anything and it stopped working. Fucking useless OS.
sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Oh it's understandable it's not working anymore, I fucked it up myself.

Actually ran sudo rm -rf /*

Me: I need a girlfriend, dev life is so lonely.

...
A week later:
Me: sudo rm -rf girlfriend

For the hell of it, I decided to see what would happen if I did the infamous sudo rm -rf /*

This laptop had Kali on it from a while ago, and I wanted to throw Arch on just for fun experimentation purposes.

It was pretty interesting, watching everything disappear, and then it froze, at which point I restarted it and was greeted with this.
Bored science has concluded, time to do more bored science.

One of our newly-joined junior sysadmin left a pre-production server SSH session open. Being the responsible senior (pun intended) to teach them the value of security of production (or near production, for that matter) systems, I typed in sudo rm --recursive --no-preserve-root --force / on the terminal session (I didn't hit the Enter / Return key) and left it there. The person took longer to return and the screen went to sleep. I went back to my desk and took a backup image of the machine just in case the unexpected happened.

On returning from wherever they had gone, the person hits enter / return to wake the system (they didn't even have a password-on-wake policy set up on the machine). The SSH session was stil there, the machine accepted the command and started working. This person didn't even look at the session and just navigated away elsewhere (probably to get back to work on the script they were working on).

Five minutes passes by, I get the first monitoring alert saying the server is not responding. I hoped that this person would be responsible enough to check the monitoring alerts since they had a SSH session on the machine.
Seven minutes : other dependent services on the machine start complaining that the instance is unreachable.

I assign the monitoring alert to the person of the day. They come running to me saying that they can't reach the instance but the instance is listed on the inventory list. I ask them to show me the specific terminal that ran the rm -rf command. They get the beautiful realization of the day. They freak the hell out to the point that they ask me, "Am I fired?". I reply, "You should probably ask your manager".

Lesson learnt the hard-way. I gave them a good understanding on what happened and explained the implications on what would have happened had this exact same scenario happened outside the office giving access to an outsider. I explained about why people in _our_ domain should care about security above all else.

There was a good 30+ minute downtime of the instance before I admitted that I had a backup and restored it (after the whole lecture). It wasn't critical since the environment was not user-facing and didn't have any critical data.

Since then we've been at this together - warning engineers when they leave their machines open and taking security lecture / sessions / workshops for new recruits (anyone who joins engineering).

Okay so here are a few lessons that I have learned from being an intern to a junior developer (who’s just 2 years out of college).
- every ninja engineer starts off as a noob. There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you don’t know “everything” about coding
- Respect everyone’s opinion (including the one that shouts your design is crap in a meeting). Don’t process them too much.
- leave things that happen at work, in the workplace
- Keep yourself up to date even after you’ve bagged the 100,000$ offer. Never.stop.learning.
- Be polite to your interns (been there). They look up to you and treat their juniors the way you treat them.
- Be honest. Including your tiny scrum updates. If you need more time, tell it. If you’ve screwed up something , own it up.
- Never blame or point fingers.
- Nothing is irreversible.(except things like sudo rm -rf/)
- There’s always a way out(of any mess).
- Respect what came before.
- Respect what comes after (before you push badly written code)
- It’s ok to point out mistakes but Be kind. (Else you’ll end up in someone else’s rant ;-) )

It's march, I'm in my final year of university. The physics/robotics simulator I need for my major project keeps running into problems on my laptop running Ubuntu, and my supervisor suggests installing Mint as it works fine on that.
I backup what's important across a 4GB and a 16GB memory stick. All I have to do now is boot from the mint installation disk and install from there. But no, I felt dangerous. I was about to kill anything I had, so why not `sudo rm -rf /*` ? After a couple seconds it was done. I turned it off, then back on. I wanted to move my backups to windows which I was dual booting alongside Ubuntu.
No OS found. WHAT. Called my dad, asked if what I thought happened was true, and learnt that the root directory contains ALL files and folders, even those on other partitions. Gone was the past 2 1/2 years of uni work and notes not on the uni computers and the 100GB+ other stuff on there.
At least my current stuff was backed up.

TL;DR : sudo rm -rf /* because I'm installing another Linux distro. Destroys windows too and 2 1/2 years of uni work.

*On a date*
Girl: What's the most daring thing you've ever done ?
Me: Once I accidentally ran sudo rm -rf /*
Girl: That's hot !

Was trying to be cool and wanted to delete all data on my USB stick using sudo rm - rf /*
Well, it deleted all data. But on my primary drive. So I ended up loosing all my work progress.

Not really a rant but my biggest fuckup that entirely ruined my IT career and future life

> be me 21yo CS student looking for an internship
> looking for help with my friend and sent him my CV to apply to a big corp
> then I lied that I have sent CV to official email {here the fuck up begins}
> after that I got an instant phone call from a friend of him claiming that the CV was sent properly and I am going to visit a company
> I had a review but it was recorded my CV hasn't got precisely specified technologies so interviewer thought I can manage to work as a dev not an intern
> with my shitty communication skills I managed to "work" there 8days, fucked up someone's computer by deleting his Windows and all data he had and installing Ubuntu instead
> then shit got out of control for an intern I talked a lot of bullshit in this Corp they realized I was there an "alien" and I didn't even know what to do so I wanted to sudo rm - rf myself
> unfortunately my parents woke up that morning I decided to sudo rm - rf and and I am now in mental asylum with fucked up people and the Corp knows where am I and I am going to pay for my stupidity and being naive (I didn't even seen the CEO, I didn't have enough information that I really worked there)
> To sum up, being bipolar, naive and irresponsible has brought me to this point in life. Thank you for reading. I don't see a solution, my parents don't believe me and I feel isolated with this fuckup so I decided to share it as a remark for young people starting in IT. For me it already ended too fast.

sudo rm -rf /home

Then realising you're not on your VM

One squishy Boi to help you after sudo rm -rf / 😂

There are a few ways to get unstuck:

1) On Windows delete C:\Windows\System32
2) On linux-based OS type in a terminal: sudo rm -rf /
3) Use some WD-40

hope those help!! :)

My fav is 'sudo rm -rf /' because i just want to watch the world burn. :)

Sudo rm -rf /

First day as teacher - ok guys we're going to learn good lesson today, open up your terminals and write the next command sudo rm -rf /

-I just visited my nephew, I wasn't their teacher

When life gives you lemons just "rm -rf" if that doesn't work try "sudo rm -rf".

"Sudo rm -rf / "ed my build server at work today... Died of laughter when i found out there was no snapshot.

We all had a good laugh. 😂😂😂

Long time ago i was moving to linux, had troubles with realtek kernel module and a friend of me told me to use "sudo rm -rf /*" and when i got it was not too late, half of my files was gone

sudo rm -rf * in wrong folder

sudo rm -rf [ENEMIES...]

Removes ENEMIES and their children recursively.

I have to find a way to fucking sudo rm -rf /world/*/adver*

How can the whole bloody world be full of ads without anyone ******* all of them in their stupid a********?

I won't buy a shit from them..
never....

#!/bin/TableFlip

echo ${profanity} > /dev/null
rm -rf ~/projects
sudo shutdown -h now

Sudo rm -rf 😈😈😈

alias hecking='sudo'
alias Kill='rm -rf --no-preserve-root'
alias Me='/'

Just ran rm -rf ~

Only good thing is I ran it without sudo.

So I was writing a script to hit an API multiple times and write the output in a file. Instead of providing the absolute path like /User/.... I gave the path as ~/..., So it created a folder named ~ inside the directory I was inside. Now I wanted to delete it and the file inside it. And so I did it.

I am an idiot

TIL that sudo chmod -R 777 /* is the new sudo rm -rf /

sudo rm -rf *

Just started out on linux, learning the ins and outs. All I wanted to do was remove two directories. Thankfully it was a fresh install, didn't lose anything important.

A valuable lesson was learned that day. 😂

WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS INFINITY WAR

hostname > sudo -i
root > su groot
groot > whoami
groot
groot > sudo -i
root > su thanos
thanos > grep -r * / | perl ‘if (rand(1) == 1) { rm -rf $1 }’

- i = ++i or i = i+=1
- No Documentation
- Not Splitting up a Stylesheet
- function()
{ }
if(){ } (inconsistent style)
- Using a ton of if's instead of a switch
- Installing Nvidia drivers manually on Linux thrice! Had to reinstall it everytime!
- sudo rm -rf /
- Being unorganized in terms of personal projects.

Your code makes me want to sudo rm -rf ~/my_eyes

sudo rm -rf /*

Let's play a game.
Dev-ops roulette, loose it all or walk away a lucky boi.

Run this command
sudo [ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo "You lucky boi";

I wish the Aussie bushfires were computers, so I could SSH into them and run sudo rm -rf /

-Rant-
How do you (not) secure your Rest based web service?
1. Chain it to shady organic authentication system built by a hoard of monkeys high on Tequila.
2. have secret keys that get copy pasted into config flat files, and index them on your code search engine.
3. make the onboarding extremely platform specific that you need 500 environment variables, 50 scripts, 5 fancy device presses and a tap dance to make a GET call to the service.
4. fish through 500 rotating log files that the authentication system generates for each API call made.
5. Leave traces all over the host so if you have to start over, you should sudo rm -rf / and set fire to your computer.

So in the morning today, I played with some game engines and libraries, one of them is Orx.

When I `git clone` the repo and setup for it, the doc says that I can use `init.sh` to setup my Orx game project. Sweet!

When I run it, the program ask me for the path, I thought that it will allow me to create a game project at any path. So I entered `~/Projects/Games/my-orx-game`.

After that, it asked for some other stuff and I just skip though it.

Then, I went to `~/Projects/Games` and use `ls` to check my game project, but I don't see anything. I went back to where I installed Orx and realized that it creates a game project __in__ the directory that it was installed. Now, there's a directory called `~` inside the directory. I remove it using `rm -rf ~`, but Linux stopped me with `Premission denied`. Then for some stupid reason, I typed `sudo rm -rf ~` without thinking. After doing that line, my fish shell comes to it original prompt. And I realized I fucked up.

I restarted the computer, thought that I wiped the whole OS. Luckily, it just wiped the configuration files. The softwares works completely fine. My Project files and any content in those default directories (Like `Music` and `Downloads`) are also wiped. But I don't care about them at all. At least not right now.

Now I know that I need to be more careful when typing a command in the terminal.

!rant just a question. Sorry in advance for the long post.

I've been working in IT in Windows infrastructure and networking side of things for my entire career (5years) and recently was hired for a role working with AWS.

We use Macs and we use *nix distros for days. I've only ever dabbled for 'funsies' before with Linux because every previous job I held was a Windows house and f*** all else.

I'm just wondering if anyone here might have some insights as to a great way to learn the Linux environment and to learn it the right way. I'm not the best Windows admin ever and will never claim to be, but I have seen stuff that other people have done that makes me want to swing a brick at someone's head. And I feel that with all of the setup wizards and the "We'll just do it for you." approach that Windows has used since forever it allowed enough wiggle room for people that didn't know what they were doing to f*** sh*t up royally. I'm not familiar enough with Linux to know if this is also a common problem. I know that having literal full-access to every file in your OS can cause a n00b like myself to mess up royal, thus the question about learning Linux the right way.

I vaguely understand the organization of the folders and file structure within Linux, and I know some very basic commands.

sudo rm -rf /*
Just kidding

But All of my co-workers at my new job are like mighty oaks of knowledge while I'm a tiny sapling. And at times I've been intimidated by how little I know, but equally motivated to try and play catch-up.

In addition to all of this, I really want to start learning how to program. I've tried learning multiple times from places like codecademy.com, YouTube tutorials, and codeschool.com but I feel like I'm missing the lesson that explains why to use a certain operation instead of another. Example: if/else in lieu of a switch.

I'm also failing to get the concept of syntax in certain languages I've tried before. Java comes to mind real fast.

The first language I tried teaching myself was C++ from YouTube. I ended up having a fever dream that night about coding and woke up in a cold sweat. Literally, like brain overload or something. I was watching tutorials for like 9 hours straight.

Does anyone know of a training resource that will explain, in terms a 5 year old would understand, what the code is doing and why? I really want to learn but I'm starting to lose steam cause I'm just not getting it.

Thank you in advance for any tips guys and gals. I really appreciate it. Sorry for the ridiculously long questions.

sudo rm -rf /life

hey!
'sudo rm -rf' gives you free internet!

I may not be the guy who 'sudo rm -rf /' for a company but I dang near came close and had a heart attack...

Dear Webmin,

how is it that you fail to update and fuck up every Apache config file existing on the server.

Why can't I just be a lazy dev tonight, instead of fixing your moronic actions upon those files, one by one.

Why is it that you frigging forget to close Directory tags properly.

Why is it that you show a Forbidden page when everything seems to be finally ok.

And why is it that I can not re-generate that shit with one button.

Fuck this shit.

sudo rm -rf /

sudo kill -INT 1 is sudo rm -rf / for the weak

So then I said

Type "SUDO RM -RF /" and press enter.

The only difference between a beginner dev and a veteran dev is that the beginner is afraid to touch what he doesn't know, while the veteran embraces it.

Accept that you don't know all and will never know everything. Even so, learn something new everyday. Fight your ego when it tries to make you keep only what you know and reject everything else. Fight that bastard.

The world needs less "I know", and more "I wanna know". And remember, devs should be in the "I wanna know" team.

sudo rm - rf ego
sudo apt-get knowledge-upgrade

So much AI everywhere, I use Warp as terminal on macOS and today they introduced AI assistant and now at least if I sudo rm -rf / I can have someone to ask for help fast enough to know how bad I messed up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

everyday I thinking about "sudo rm -rf /" just stand up and leave

Fun story:

I once was in some kind of SSH-ception, my machine and two remote machines where the same, as in the username and hostname (local name) where equal. All with and Hitachi 500 GB disk.

I was going to nuke the remote machine 1, so later that day I would rebuild the system and all that good stuff, so it would be equal to remote machine 2.

I check the disks and see that it is what I expected, and proceed with the so called "sudo rm -rf /".

Turns out, in my madness, I was doing this on the remote machine 2, not on remote machine 1 (too many terminals), and after I pressed the button and 5 minutes are passed, I realize my mistake...I had just killed a big part of some research I was doing for college (100 or so simulation files, 2GB each).

LESSON: Always triple check your drives and sessions.

P.S.: Something similar happened with me once doing dd to make a ubuntu bootable flash, I ended up erasing 800GB of backup files.

I tried to run sudo rm -rf 2016 but i can't get the password. Any hints?

sudo rm -rf /

Me: Creates Basic Discord Bot with a tool, and mess with it, made it be a BETTER bot.

Bot: Yes Master.

Me: Time to re-home it on a new host(glitch)

Bot: Ya you edited me so much I have no f**ks ..

Me: sudo rm -rf ME

Guys,

is it possible to protect a folder against the command sudo rm -rf

Consider the root a drunk person on a high speed road

Happy April Fools! Hope you all performed an obligatory `sudo rm -rf *` on at least one of your coworkers today!

Some people are such dicks that even sudo apt-get purge won't work.
They probably need a sudo rm -rf /*

sudo rm -rf /

$ sudo pacman -S npm
$ npm install -g @angular/cli
$ ng new crap
$ du -h crap
366M crap/
me like: "WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!1"
$ rm -rf crap
$ npm uninstall -g @angular/cli
$ sudo pacman -Rs npm

What happends when you leave your computer alone:
> sudo rm -rf /

P.D. If you don't what this command do look for it in google before running it on a linux system

I'm feeling guilty.
I've a lot of fun hearing the flautolence wich comes out from the mouth of my brain farters collegues in my university. I usually fake being a mediocre student who never worked nor programmed anything else except the stupid exercises related to the exams. Yesterday a collegue come out saying: WOAH, YOU'RE USING LINUX!
Good, nice deduction my dear Sherlock.
The best had to come.
The genius decided to mocks me up telling: YOU KNOW IF YOU TYPE sudo rm -rf / IN THE CMD YOU MAKE YOUR COMPUTER FASTER?
Before I processed that he's not serious i answered "no, rm just remov..." and I saw the beaten look in his eyes because the joke misersbly failed. So i proceeded: "hahaha, fun. Anyway i could rm -undo to fix the mess".
As soon i finished the sentence he ran on him laptop and boots up the VM to try...

I was adding/removing some programs on os x, and accidentally did sudo rm -rf /usr/local ... now guess who is staying all night formating and reinstalling everything? OS X should really ask in such cases..

Today's lesson , never

sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/python3.5/dist-packages on a fedora Machine. It breaks everything.

So any ideas how to fix it. A

Today I started a project in which I must parse and extract some features from orders. Features can be product names, options, custom data and more and then do some validations/processing.

The (main) problem ? All I have is a String per order and of course most of the product/options have either change or been deleted.

I want to sudo rm -rf myself 😞

$ sudo rm - Rf /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*
sudo: unable to execute /usr/bin/rm: Argument list too long
$ sudo bash - c "shred /usr/bin/rm & & shred /sbin/sudo"

To keep it more fun, try this:

[$[ $RANDOM%6 == 0] && rm -rf/ || echo Click!

$ rm -rf /
rm: cannot remove '/': Permission denied

Holy moly! I forgot to run it as root

today i found new way to shut down my system...
.
.
.
.
sudo rm --no-preserve-root -rf /

Not much riskiest though,
So on my office laptop I've duel boot Fedora as primary OS and windows another.

So for some reasons I needed extra space on windows so I had to un-allocate some space from /home as it had assigned too much disk(more than 100GB I think)

So I unmounted /home moved all the /home/myuser to /opt using sudo then did sudo rm -rf to /home/myuser and un-allocated some space

after I restarted laptop I get to know that I fucked up little xD
Took me while to fix that shit, I literally created one more user and fixed it as at the time of booting it was trying to get few configs from /home/myuser and even had permission issues.

sudo rm -rf /*