I accidentally untarred archive intended to be extracted in root directory, which among others included some files for /etc directory.
I went on to rm -rv ~/etc, but I quickly typed rm -rv /etc instead, and hit enter, while using a root account.

  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
    42·
    16 hours ago

    OOOOOOOOOOOF!!

    One trick I use, because I’m SUPER paranoid about this, is to mv things I intend to delete to /tmp, or make /tmp/trash or something.

    That way, I can move it back if I have a “WHAT HAVE I DONE!?” moment, or it just deletes itself upon reboot.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        12·
        5 hours ago

        That’s certainly something you can do! I would personally follow the recommendation against aliasing rm though, either just using the trash tool’s auto complete or a different alias altogether.

        Reason being as someone mentioned below: You don’t want to give yourself a false sense of security or complacency with such a dangerous command, especially if you use multiple systems.

        I liken it to someone starting to handle weapons more carelessly because the one they have at home is “never loaded.” Better safe than sorry.

        Lol we should have “rules of rm safety”:

        • Assume rm is always sudo unless proven otherwise.
        • Finger should be off the Enter key until you are certain you are ready to delete.
        • Never point rm at something you aren’t willing to permanently destroy.
        • Always be aware of your target directory, and what is recursively behind it!
        • Sylveon@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          5 hours ago

          I think this is the best approach. I’ve created a short alias for my trash tool and also aliased rm to do nothing except print a warning. This way you train yourself to avoid using it. And if I really need it for some reason I can just type \rm.

          If you want to train yourself even more effectively you can also alias rm to run sl instead :)

    • Alberat@lemmy.world
      5·
      11 hours ago

      i always do “read;rm ./file” which gives me a second to confirm and also makes it so i don’t accidentally execute it out of my bash history with control-r