Le 06/02/2016 17:19, Rainer Weikusat a écrit :
> Steve Litt<slitt@???> writes:
>> >On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 18:33:44 +0100 Didier Kryn<kryn@???> wrote:
>> >
>>> >> People have always expected rm -rf / to destroy the OS. They
>>> >>also know that, from the keyboard, with root priviledge, they can
>>> >>destroy the partition table of the disk. All this is repairable by
>>> >>the admin her/himself.
>>> >>
>>> >> The ability to brick the motherboard is brand new.
>> >
>> >Not only brand new, but an entirely new level of consequence.
>> >
>> >With excellent backups, rm -rf / or even dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 is
>> >correctable with a few hours of work, on the premises, with only
>> >resources on the premises.
> A somewhat seriously wrong conception about the relation between / (the
> root of the filesystem name tree) and /dev/sda1 (some partition of a
> mass storage device) seems to exist here.
Sure Rainer, admins with a little of experience know that. This was
just a partial enumeration of simple actions able to destroy an
installed OS.
You are right to insist on the BIG difference between these two
actions and the fact that rm -rf is much more destructive than
reformatting /. However, the main danger of rm -rf, up to now, was
typically its potential to wipe out /home. None of the pseudofilesystem
represented a danger. Experienced people running this command would just
unmount any filesystem they would like to preserve and would never have
thought of this new, well hidden, danger.
Didier