rm -rf / limitation is from Solaris [LWN.net]

rm -rf / limitation is from Solaris

Posted Apr 4, 2009 0:03 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: rm -rf / limitation is from Solaris by tzafrir
Parent article: Shortening the rope

I wonder whether Solaris got it first or GNU coreutils?

* Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):

** New features
[...]
chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
--preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)

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rm -rf / limitation is from Solaris

Posted Apr 4, 2009 9:10 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Hmmm.... when you accidentally run 'rm -rf /' do you take the time to add --preserve-root to the command-line?

That extra switch is nice. However according to the coreutils changelog, --preserver-root was made the default of rm on 2006-02-09 (didn't check to which version it applies).

That 2004 blog entry is after the Solaris guys successfully changed POSIX, which I assume takes its own extra time.