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I accidentally untarred archive intended to be extracted in root directory, which among others included some files for /etc directory.
I went on to rm -rv ~/etc, but I quickly typed rm -rv /etc instead, and hit enter, while using a root account.

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[-] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Welcome to the "I have shot myself in the foot with rm" club! Take a seat anywhere!

(Mine was trying to delete the old System 9 "System Folder" by typing rm -rf System\ Folder, but instead hitting the return key when it came time to hit the \, thereby starting a deletion of the running macOS 10 operating system inside the "System" folder. It got through the c's in the second and a half or so before my frantic control-C attempts halted it. Amazingly, OS X would still boot, but no longer run Carbon apps, necessitating a complete OS reinstall, lol.)

[-] phx@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I try to always put the -rf at the end for this reason. Not sure what works on Mac but it does allow it on most Linux shells

this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
568 points (99.1% liked)

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