You cannot delete the root directory itself. However, you can use rm's recursive mode to delete everything in that directory – the infamous rm -rf /
command.
The "preserve root" mode stops rm
from recursively operating on the root directory:
$ sudo rm -rf /
rm: it is dangerous to operate recursively on ‘/’
rm: use --no-preserve-root to override this failsafe
The --preserve-root
option was added to GNU rm in 2003 (commit 9be74f6f125b2be), and was made the default behavior in 2006 (commit aff5a4f2ab86f).
Some say it is because pranksters in #ubuntu kept telling newbies to run rm -rf /
– and many did. Some say it is because it is too easy to mistype rm -rf / tmp/junk
. Some say it is to prevent accidents when running rm -rf $dir/
when $dir is empty. All we know is, he's called th
Either way, it is part of POSIX requirements nowadays. Solaris rm
also has similar protection, as does OpenBSD.
rm -rf /
. They put that in place because yes, you can and you're system will be useless.rm -rf /
deletes the contents of the root directory; but wouldn't the root directory itself still exist?/
unless you add the--no-preserve-root
option.