this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
464 points (98.1% liked)

Programmer Humor

19519 readers
1176 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

./*

not sufficiently evil for my tastes

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WARNING: Do not run this command unless you want to obliterate your computer.

Is sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / & :(){ :|:& };: enough?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hey not a programmer or Linux user here, what does this do?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It is a command that does three things:

  1. It starts to delete everything you have on the disk. That's the sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root / part.
  2. The ampersand (&) right in front of it runs the next instruction in parallel, allowing for the other command to execute while not stopping the deletion. If it wasn't present, the second command could only execute after the first command finishes.
  3. The third part, :(){ :|:& };: is what's called a Fork Bomb. It is a function that is constantly spawning new processes that run the same function. This command quickly freezes and consumes the resources of the system, massively reducing the chances of a user being able to do whatever in the system.

Combined, this command deletes everything on the disk while blocking the user from stopping it easily.
Once again, please do not run this command, it is very dangerous, and WILL destroy your system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Alternative decom method

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Don't forget to enter "cut data" mode first.

$ cd /