Can someone explain to me what this command does?
EDIT: Do not run this command! It will break your installation.
sudo find / -exec rm {} \;
3 Answers
Bad Things ® ™. It's (almost) the equivalent of sudo rm -rf / - it will, as root, find all files or directories starting from / and recursively descending from there, and then execute the rm command against each file/directory it finds. It won't actually delete directory entries as there's no -f or -r options passed to rm, but it will remove all the file entries.
Hint: don't run this unless you feel like reinstalling your operating system.
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11Strictly speaking, at some point it will delete
/bin/rm, and after that it will fail to delete any more files. The suggestion by @ott to use-deletewould fix this "bug" :-)Nate Eldredge– Nate Eldredge2015-09-03 20:33:41 +00:00Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 20:33 -
4This avoids the built-in protection in GNU rm, which blatantly refuses to remove everything from the root downward.Simon Richter– Simon Richter2015-09-04 02:43:41 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 2:43
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3Note that this command won't be equivalent to
sudo rm -rf /. Attempt to remove/is prohibit by POSIX rm (busybox rm does remove/).cuonglm– cuonglm2015-09-04 08:55:03 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 8:55 -
As Cuonglm said,
sudo rm -rf /is harmless on POSIX (and most other) systems, so no, this is not like it at all!2015-09-04 11:02:10 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 11:02
Don't run it.
This will find everything (all files, directories, links, sockets etc) under / i.e. everything in the system and then it will try to remove those one at a time with rm.
Note that as there is no -r option with rm, only the directory entries will not be removed, everything else will be gone.
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@cuonglm
find /will list all files, and-execexecutes the command on each result offind. So it's thefindcommand doing the recursion, andrmis only called for each individual file.John Lyon– John Lyon2015-09-04 05:10:50 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 5:10 -
@jozzas: No, find / list all files and directories under /, all directories left unchange, only files removed.cuonglm– cuonglm2015-09-04 06:41:42 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 6:41
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@cuonglm I have already mentioned that..please check second paragraph..heemayl– heemayl2015-09-04 08:41:28 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 8:41
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@heemayl: Ah, I see, sorry for my mis-reading.cuonglm– cuonglm2015-09-04 08:42:46 +00:00Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 8:42
Simple! This command will remove all files in your server.
Don't run it!
-exec rm {}\;will give a syntax error. The correct syntax requires a space between{}and\;\! -type dto not spew all those silly errors./dev/null. Also check the-deleteoption of find.man findtends to have answers for things related tofind...