Running rm -rf / on Linux

[enderossel]

Tip for Ubuntu put all critecal stuff of THE System in THE initrd and protect it for deleting

[lucase62]

I always dreamed of doing this, I just imagined it'd be about 4 seconds of the terminal, then reboot, then some critical error

[BlueKewne]

Every linux user needs to do this once; at least on a virtual box, just as a "See this? This is bad, don't do it" sorta lesson.

[Grzecho0o]

21 people have rm -rf'ed their system.

[samplingrate]

1:36 - "Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going."

[blingdead100]

whats the song name and artist?

Please Reply :)

[piemanization]

What version of Popcorn is this?

[JWAGVideo]

This is so emotional...

[vladpudovkin]

oh nooo.. he's killing himself!

[koihoshi]

I lol'd - this is hilarious

[TheOrinx]

May I try this at home

[Nxqd3051990]

name of this song please ?

[etrevio8]

@Nxqd3051990 The original was Popcorn by Hot Butter, but there are lots of other versions, remakes and covers ;)

[000mrcool000]

wow

crazy...

[Madonkadonk]

NO, NOT THE PORN!

[ILoserMan]

Would be a lot faster if you didn't make it verbose

[regishv]

Video of this would be much faster on FreeBSD ;-)

# rm -rf /

rm: "/" may not be removed

#

:D

[herseIf]

@regishv rm -rf /* would probably work though

[gadgetmanubuntu]

@regishv fix: type # rm -rf /*

[c0dyfaux]

@regishv rm has been updated to require the --no-preserve-root flag. rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

[TurekPolski]

20 people lost their files due to lack of knowlege about what rm actually does :-D

[chemikus2206]

I really like the music, but can't remember what it was... Somebody who can bringt it back to my mind???

[bugybunny1]

@chemikus2206 The original is from Hot Butter - Popcorn. But this sounds like a remix, dunno which one exactly.

[GMarmitt]

i accidentally did that in my home directory yesterday.. i felt just like an idiot hahahah at least the root file system remained. My new mind note is "use rm -rf * with caution."

[667sandman667]

reminds me of bash shell russian roulette:

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo "You live"

5 times out of 6 it's a really fun game:p

[Anzuo]

@667sandman667 OMG THAT'S AWESOME. I took the liberty of making it even more fun:

[ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null || sleep 30; echo "You live"

I assure you, those will be the longest 30 seconds of your life.

[linuxrocksrulers]

I should flag this - and all other same kind videos - as "Infringes my rigts >> Invades my privacy"

Btw! Can you do that command on windows?

(I'd use linux over windows. Even if only in text mode! Windows is a TOTAL fail! Mac OS X ain't better! (Im typing this of a MacBook, and and good for surfers, not hardcores!)

[vaibzzz123]

@linuxrocksrulers no, windows has MS-DOS shell, while *nix systems use bash or sh, so you can't do this on windows (I know, it sucks, Windows was meant to be screwed around with :)

[MoepToefQuiik]

@vaibzzz123 It's a common missunderstanding that cmd is the windows shell. The windows shell is explorer.exe. And neither is cmd ms-dos.

[vaibzzz123]

@MoepToefQuiik I know, but I'm talking about the command line shell, like bash as linux command line shell, and gnome/kde for x shell, explorer.exe gui shell for windows, MS-DOS (well almost) shell for command line shell for Windows :)

[LittleWhisperity]

I usally do it instead of shutting down Ubuntu Live CD (memdisk)

[mah0aga]

catchy tune

[masterdave208]

Virtual Mashine .. get it ^^

[masterdave208]

Virtual Mashine .. get it ^^

[richivalever32]

Why u di that .can u explain for what i need do that im new in informatica

[benjabean1]

How did you keep the video?

[tanoloke]

@myself248 DLL Jenga... Sounds cool! Maybe some day.. I'll play same thing on my linux laptop.. Who will brick laptop? :)

[sowhatisthequestion]

Whats the Music called?

[NexJedi]

Dumn, why i don't have popcorn while i watch this video?? XD It's not fair, I had to have popcorn!

First has been removed /usr, after everything else

It was fun, right after the massacre (when introduced and performed rm -rf /) had put the funeral music

(I was translated it in google translate)

[vivijoma]

Do it, in the host not in the guest. Cool anyway

[TwosComplement]

POPCORN HELL YESSSS!

[Cab0cl0]

Running this command makes baby Jesus cry.

It's Satan's work.

[f3l1xfelix]

ouch... it hurts soooo bad :S

[isildur4ofdeath]

damn you had a lot of porn XD

[IAmKiraIWillKillYou]

hahahaha funny xD

[RenegadeFury]

Give me 5 dollars or I press enter is a nice death threat

[NullByte7]

Just done the same thing ^^

[ImIndoPeople]

deleting linux more/less than 3-5 minutes

installing linux more han 45 minutes

Wow that was rigged

[alexanderpas]

@ImIndoPeople Installing Windows 3-5 hours...

Deleting Windows... Try using Linux for that.

[lukestratton1]

What is that music?

[ImIndoPeople]

@lukestratton1 POPCORN



[DonYabanotte]

@lukestratton1 Popcorn

[aaroncar]

Now that's unfriendly to do.

[pwrsurge]

At least you got rid of another ubuntu installation. They have the colors right; warm brown smelly crap.

[shoguevara]

My Ubuntu 10.04 doesn't let me do that...

[ThExR3V0LVER]

People have actually shifted rm -rf / one character up...You generally have to be cautious when you are asked to run commands in linux from people you don't know...

P.S. In Mac its more epic :D

[samplingrate]

Dave... Dave... My mind is going, Dave...

[lowtone10]

i just did this on an old laptop. after it had finished i ran ls, to which it responded "/bin/python no directory" (or something like that"

[rCX12]

I get chills watching this.

[traceyrmj2]

Doesn't do that now. the command rm is a link to rm --preserve-root.

[gadgetmanubuntu]

@traceyrmj2 $ sudo rm -rf /* has and will in Ubuntu 10.04

[Rubdos]

Why don't they block this command...

[ZebaSzp]

yeah, now that's a great idea...

[Revolltio]

Good Job! If have an Ubuntu: "rm -rf" is the best choice. After that install a real linux distri like arch, opensuse, fedora or gentoo ;)

[windowspiratato]

@Revolltio do you mean debian instead of fedora, right?

[CentiZen]

@Revolltio If someones using Ubuntu, and moves to gentoo, how well do you think that's going to go over? JEEZUZ WHY THE FACK I CANT DO ANYTHING?!

Ubuntu is linux for noobs. So let the noobs use it so they don't fill up the support channels with useless dribble.

[yugenekr]

cool ^)

[jinkingThis]

should be running on ubuntu livecd

[CarrotSoft1]

おもしろかったです( It's very interesting!! )

[Ap3WD]

I hope you were using a virtual machine (?)

[Born2killx]

Nah, that's definitely his mission-critical work computer. :P

[MoepToefQuiik]

@Ap3WD He did, look at the end.

[xps1340]

lol, I don't even know why that is funny, it just is.

[RenegadeFury]

THIS IS HURTING MY SOUL!

[renkinjutsu01]

that command would be executed almost instantly if it weren't for the -v switch!

For some reason, outputting text to the terminal slows down the actual process, and 'rm' without -v actually removes instantly!

[swar0g]

you can do this for many times in a day without harming your computer. just install a virtualisation software like kvm and start it in snapshot mode

[mgt802]

This is scary, why is such a command even possible.

[Adlandshostmaster]

because you might want to use it. Duh.

[Dracolith1]

Of course it's scary.

Why wouldn't it be possible?

[mace1337]

hell yeah popcorn

[shinathopth]

sudo apt-get install super-kamikaze_krazy

[1d4n4y]

Poor linux =(

*cry*

[r8qt7]

old news ... have done the same in win95 ... always fun if you're angry about your OS behaviour

[bubuka79]

yeah, I've done it w/ W98.. it only locked 3 files, the rest went down. Then started to work crappy before giving up completely.

Revenge is sweeet >:]

[myself248]

We used to play DLL Jenga on Win3.1, wherein players take turns deleting DLLs and starting apps to see when the system falls over.

[morbidlyobesecatband]

@myself248 Where do you download it?

[Soligniari]

@myself248 That is probably one of the funniest things I have heard in while.

[ov3rcl0cks]

Yeah but most people don't hand out root password. You can do the same thing in windows "RD C:\ /S /Q" as any non-limited user, Admin users in windows have less power than a root user in linux, yet they can still crash a system with a fairly simple command. This is almost easier to prevent than to make happen.

[robbiemcm]

omfd fake! He used `rm -rfv /`

[cklopfenstein]

Errr....Straight form the man page for `rm`:

-v  Be verbose when deleting files, showing them as they are removed.

Nice try, tard helmet...

[girishvaikom]

Fixing /boot/grub/menu.lst and /etc/fstab is childs play..

[marlls1989]

All the procedures you mention are easily recovered by anyone with some tech skills better then Ubuntu.

those files syntax are pretty straight forward, being the fstab almost the same for every unix and the grubs menu.lst almost universal amount OSDev hobbyists , like me, and people who used linux before the there-is-a-plenty-of-scripts-t­o-do-it-for-you era.

[Phant0mads]

format C:

gets rid of unneccesairy crap (if run in windows)

[Ezcut]

lol , looks like a vm =P

[W00Pg]

It is...

[NJMJanik]

Он сумасшедший! He crazy!

[frvfilms]

you should of put light green letters and black background on the terminal-- matrix mode..

[marlls1989]

this way is cleaner...

I would change the nautilus to spatial, set the theme to glossy and place a lighter back ground.

Maybe I`d also remove the top panel and place all widgets in a windows alike manner, or maybe left it on the top but remove all those excessive icons and widgets

[pesterseagles]

1:36 We hit gold!

[Mainyard48]

"2001 A Space Odyssey" - when they start shutting down Hal.

[Mainyard48]

"I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid."

[importenmypcis]

where is that quoted from? is sounds so familiar

[LinuxSpade]

Google has been around for a bit.

[uncleroxk]

HAHA... good one

[agentc0re]

Wayne, I think you broke your VM. :P

[hleon768]

to mangle your pc, nothing more efficiente like the CLI, just a simple

# sudo rm -rf /*

how many clicks do this guy in Ubuntu...

[Racecar564]

You don't need sudo if you're root.

# means root.

[hleon768]

1 week and only you notice it, that's the ubuntu's way

[4dIer]

I'm pleased to tell all of you, that this doesn't happend anymore.

rm -rf now has become an alias for rm -rf --preserve-root.

[Rafdaganga]

does sudo rm -rf / work?

[4dIer]

No.

It's like doing "sudo rm -rf / --preserve-root"

[Rafdaganga]

what does --preserve-root does it override sudo or something?..

[Racecar564]

How WOULD you not use --preserve-root?

[Rafdaganga]

bro i don't get what your saying

what does preserve-root do?..

[linuxx0r]

actually it's --no-preserve-root, in newer versions of "rm" it wouldn't remove anything unless this switch is specified (it only exists so that people don't wreck their system by accident)

[4dIer]

--no-preserve-root would actually NOT preserve root (duh).

So, --preserve-root is default on any rm.

[Pro7ektDub]

Lulz 1:37

[youpirain]

A very old song named "popcorn"

[webbie878]

I would have to second DoomyDoom. What music did you use for this?

[kinxofsepluv]

Hopefully it was a Virtual machine.

[kochkochkoch]

1:37 ROFL XD

[calrogman]

Ran this recently on a Xubuntu VM to relieve the stress of finding out that my VM install of Gentoo failed because I forgot to set a root password, for those who haven't tried this, Gentoo randomizes the root password if no password is set manually during the install.

[Evi1M4chine]

What „Gentoo. Do you mean that installer? Real Gentoo has no installer! Thats the fuckin point of it! Only lame live CDs have one. And its a pile of crap.

Or did you mean that when you set no password, it will depend on the content of the shadow file from baselayout?

[calrogman]

I used a minimal CD to boot the VM to perform a manual install, and as part of the process (before exiting the chroot and unmounting the HDD before rebooting) I forgot to set a root password so it randomized it next boot. I didn't read into how it randomizes the root password and had no other users so that was 5 hours down the shitter. =(

[Seretur00]

try sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/

[Evi1M4chine]

Too slow. Try

dd if=/dev/null of=/

[Seretur00]

The idea was to generate a chaos, not a predictable zero-filled system XD

On second thoughts, using urandom would be faster. The possibility exists of leaving the system in exactly the same state XD

[steamtt]

was ez

[maxcoollol]

I just tried it and now my computer doesn't work anymore ^_^

[internetfan5103]

at 1:59 the error had no font or lang to speak so thats why that happened. (squares happened)

[JeyPeyy]

uhm, it never did. look at 1:37. But yeah, the fonts are gone

[Racecar564]

lol

[gaban06]

poor tuxxD

[superhackar]

haxax

[seansfilms]

haha, that error was my favorite :)

[Compgenius999]

if u really needed to get rid of everything, rip the hard drive out, open it up and snap the internal disk, then run a magnet through the hard drive so there is no chance of recovery

[gordonjcp]

Nah. A single pass of random data will wipe out anything beyond any hope of recovery on any drive made in the last ten years. Forget all this 27 trillion passes of some arcane pattern, it's nonsense.

We've come a long, long way from MFM drives where you could see the individual bits with special magnetic ink and a microscope.

[d0n7r33dd15]

what a great operating system

[EnumaRos]

Мне чуть не поплохело от этого видео сначала, как представил что у себя так же сделаю :)

Спасли меня последние кадры, где видно что сделано это было из-под virtualBox'а :)

[ale12396]

I did that, and when I rebooted, when GRUB was loading, it said "Error 15".

[zecle]

what the point of such command ? do linux users have something to hide ? like in case of the policemen break into their home ?

fucking suicide process !

[enyawix]

zecle a linux user would need to hide the same stuff as windows user. This video is stupid. A quick dd command would be just an secure. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$harddrive bs=512

[brunofin12]

This command was made for delete files not the whole HD. It's the same as running something like "remove C:\file.dat" on Windows. If you do "remove C:" it's the same thing, it's just something stupid to do. It was not made for a situation like... "Hey they're here! go! run that command that deletes everything, go go!!"

[R3D3S1GN]

lol.. this video was only to show what rm -rf / did, quit bitching. its for entertainment

[R3D3S1GN]

The above comment was directed at zecle

[schmidtbag]

this isn't formatting, its just deleting, so the files are still recoverable

[AWvids]

it's because when Unix was created (what Linux is based off of) , the people that made it wanted a more open and efficient working environment, with the ability to tell the computer to delete things and kill itself at will, and it's a good thing that they havent taken that feature away because then us computer geeks would have no entertainment!lol jkjkjkjk

[HardcoreIstKrieg]

fucking gay music my friend

[shakazzolo]

COOL! I never tried that... lol

[JuStCaLLMeJoHnN]

way to have homosexual music.

[serdel88]

i'd rather cat /dev/urandom > /dev/sda

[My1name1is1Emor]

Hmmm... just out of interest, does anyone know if you can do this on a CD-R(not RW). That'd be like, proving you can remove from them xD.

EMZ=P

[udonpit]

พี่น้อง ทำได้ลงคอ ไม่ทุบเครื่องทิ้งเลยหล่ะ

[IdOnTLikEtHiSrAp]

WTF ???

[dawndaemon]

Every OS has its own command that does this... For Unix-like ones, the rm is the way (not) to go :)

[patu811]

That was so epic with the synthetisator music and all, files and dirs swarming into kingdom come... left me with a sort of melancholy feeling.

[SonicSonedit]

win

[tangerine734]

does this only work on linux, or does it work on anything?

[calrogman]

Works on anything *nix.

[sitnavel]

spectacular! But you really got to be really hard-balled to do that in reality. Technically, you can just write an alias, like instead of "rm -rfv /" do "ls -r | the_add_Removed_word_script" and kill SIGKILL some processes :p and you don`t need to wipe out your system to see that :)

[Bonta999]

why did they make that type of command anyway.

[420timetoburn]

because rm -Rf is used to delete folders. but he's running as sudo to delete /. which is root.

[youngromh4x0r]

Seriously, this guy roasted his Ubuntu...

[youngromh4x0r]

LOL, the song is "Popcorn" by CrazyFrog.

And, rm -rf /

F T W !!

[PAUKKU92]

The song is not by "CrazyFrog"! It was originally composed by Gershon Kingsley many decades ago.

[youngromh4x0r]

We know -_-

[Nailgunster]

try #cat /dev/urandom > /dev/sda

[youngromh4x0r]

or #cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null

Hanged every system I tried it on.

[Dalem50005]

Lol, one of my friends did do this to a computer at school (Mac OS X in Single User Mode). He didn't get in trouble. Anyways, what's the song?

[MINDwedge]

Same. He typed it just as the teacher walked behind him lol. Single user mode FTW.

[nchristy08]

Are you living in the Dark Ages or what, it's Popcorn for Christ's sake. This song is almost 25 years old...

[darkslateblue]

no! you made it kill itself! you heartless, heartless geek.

[rauron9]

This only works in some distros like ubuntu. If you try to do this in arch or gentoo, it will just tell you that you are a dumbass.

[TADsince1995]

Please notice that it resisted for 2 minutes. Try to do this in Windows and within 5 seconds you'll see the BSOW.