On Wednesday 19 October 2005 02:27, Carlos E. R. wrote:
The Tuesday 2005-10-18 at 19:50 +0200, Steve Graegert wrote:
Are you joking?
For a single file? As root? What if he mistypes and erases his whole disk?
The OP suggested that the file is mysteriously locked somehow. What would you suggest to do about it without being in superuser mode (and without rebooting, of course)?
But Fergus sugested to do:
# rm -rf [name-of-your-directory]
as root. The -r stands for recursive, and -f for force (no questions asked). If there is an error, an horrible lot of files may be erased, he could destroy the system.
The proper procedure would be to become superuser, yes, then delete each thing explicitly. First empty the directory, then erase it with rd. If a recursive erase is used, as root, first you have to check carefully what is inside, specially links.
IMO, of course :-)
-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson
Well, there's no harm in caution. They'd have to be hard links, though, for it to matter, wouldn't they? I wasn't advising him to type rm -rf / ; if he did, then he'd be comprehensively *****ed, it's true. But if he's that bad at following directions he probably crosses the road by shutting his eyes tight and running out shouting 'Mind the chickens!' and then doing the jitterbug on the centre line and finds his way home by following the nicest shaped cloud. -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB UK Tel: 0161 834 7961 Fax: 0161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk