this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Fun fact, rm -rf /* does not need --no-preserve-root. It will happily start as technically, according to the preserve root check, /* is not root as the target is not /

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's slightly different. Your shell will see the /* and replace it with all the directories under /, e.g. /bin /dev /etc /home etc. So the actual command that runs is rm -rf /bin /dev /etc /home etc.