Command Line Delete Everything

Question

1.00/5 (2 votes)

See more:

I had an idea for something in the terminal/command line that would basically delete EVERYTHING very very VERY easily. I didn't want to try it on my computer, but theoretically do you think it might work?

sudo rm -r /

Posted 5-Sep-14 18:29pm

Nick Salesky

Add a Solution

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 6-Sep-14 0:51am

How about RTFM?
—SA

2 solutions

Solution 2

That would just remove everything in / mount point.

Posted 5-Sep-14 19:08pm

CPallini

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 6-Sep-14 1:11am

If the command line is written correctly of course... (a 5) :-)
—SA

CPallini 6-Sep-14 1:20am

Thank you.

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-05T18:51:00

Solution 1

Big deal… Do it on removable drive, or on some unwanted directory, anything you can play with. :-)
It's

sudo rm -r /

or, if you really want to do it all without confirmation ("force"), you need to use -f:

sudo rm -rf /

Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rm_%28Unix%29[^],
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/faq/part3/section-6.html[^].

—SA

Posted 5-Sep-14 18:51pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Comments

CPallini 6-Sep-14 1:09am

5.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 6-Sep-14 1:10am

Thank you, Carlo.
—SA