Protection of The Filesystem Root
Sun Microsystems introduced "rm -rf /" protection in Solaris 10, first released in 2005. Upon executing the command, the system now reports that the removal of / is not allowed. Shortly after, the same functionality was introduced into FreeBSD version of rm utility. GNU rm refuses to execute rm -rf / if the --preserve-root option is given, which has been the default since version 6.4 of GNU Core Utilities was released in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Rm (Unix)
Famous quotes containing the words protection of the, protection of, protection and/or root:
“The protection of a ten-year-old girl from her father’s advances is a necessary condition of social order, but the protection of the father from temptation is a necessary condition of his continued social adjustment. The protections that are built up in the child against desire for the parent become the essential counterpart to the attitudes in the parent that protect the child.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“We’re for statehood. We want statehood because statehood means the protection of our farms and our fences; and it means schools for our children; and it means progress for the future.”
—Willis Goldbeck (1900–1979)
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the laws’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“...there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 14:7-10.