On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 01:56:54PM +1030, [EMAIL PROTECTED] typed: > Quoting Lowell Gilbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > Can you explain what you think is a problem? > > Well - it's happened to two uf us in the past month! > In both cases the operator was copying files from one drive to another and > wished to delete files from the second drive on which the copy resided. In > both cases rm -rf removed both copy AND source! :-( > > In my case I was setting up a larger hard drive from a smaller one using > dump/restore, partition by partition. I had just completed copying one smallish > partition and began copying the next, larger partition having forgotten to > change directories. Naturally I soon ran out of room. ("Bother", said Pooh). > No problem, I'll delete the wrongly copied directories from that smaller > partition, move to the larger one, and try again. Unfortunately, rm -rf home > removed home from the source /usr directory as well! :-( I presume that this > was due to /home being a symlink to /usr/home, and somehow that link remained, > so that -r referred to everything below the symlink as well as to the directory > I was trying to remove. > > Whatever the explanation, IMHO rm -r should NOT do this by default.
The manpage rm(1) says: The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links. So what you describe shouldn't have happened. There is one case where removing symlinks can be confusing: rm -rf /home # removes only the symbolic link rm -rf /home/ # removes directory tree /home is linked to So what were the exact commands you issued? > > -- > Brian > > > > ----------------------------------------------- > This message sent through Adam Internet Webmail > http://www.adam.com.au > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message