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Questions tagged [rm]

75 questions
177
votes
31 answers

How do I prevent accidental rm -rf /*?

I just ran rm -rf /* accidentally, but I meant rm -rf ./* (notice the star after the slash). alias rm='rm -i' and --preserve-root by default didn't save me, so are there any automatic safeguards for this? I wasn't root and cancelled the command…
Valentin Nemcev
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119
votes
24 answers

rm on a directory with millions of files

Background: physical server, about two years old, 7200-RPM SATA drives connected to a 3Ware RAID card, ext3 FS mounted noatime and data=ordered, not under crazy load, kernel 2.6.18-92.1.22.el5, uptime 545 days. Directory doesn't contain any…
BMDan
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35
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5 answers

Could `rm -rf / --no-preserve-root` mess up the bios?

In order to see approximate speeds for tarballing an entire system, and then restoring that system when if it was foobar'd, I partially cloned one of our primary systems onto a workstation that, while not integral to our company systems, would be…
MirroredFate
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32
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11 answers

How to make `rm` faster on ext3/linux?

I have ext3 filesystem mounted with default options. On it I have some ~ 100GB files. Removal of any of such files takes long time (8 minutes) and causes a lot of io traffic, which increases load on server. Is there any way to make the rm not as…
user13185
26
votes
3 answers

Cannot delete folder with rm -rf. Error: device or resource busy

I'm trying to delete /var/www/html but I'm getting this error: rm: cannot remove `html': Device or resource busy
Hugo
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23
votes
2 answers

Will Ansible prevent the execution of 'rm -rf /' in a shell script

This is based upon this hoax question here. The problem described is having a bash script which contains something to the effect of: rm -rf {pattern1}/{pattern2} ...which if both patterns include one or more empty elements will expand to at least…
aroth
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11
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3 answers

Unix magic, delete all .pyc files from a tree of directories?

Is there a quick way of deleting all the .pyc files from a tree of directories?
interstar
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9
votes
1 answer

cannot remove file, Device or resource busy

I tried removing a file. The most relevant answer can be found here, but I found no luck. Here is the original problem: maxgitt@mgpc:~$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/docker/ rm: cannot remove '/var/lib/docker/aufs': Device or resource busy To locate the…
Max
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9
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3 answers

Is there a way to delete 100GB file on Linux without thrashing IO / load?

I have a huge log file I need to delete on a production web server. I'm worried it'll bring the system to a crawl if I rm it on Linux. Any brilliant ideas? Update: Filesystem: ext3 Partition: /var (mostly logs and MySQL data) Log file is no longer…
objectoriented
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9
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10 answers

Best practices to prevent 'rm -rf /' in bash scripts

It's well known fact that extra space in env.variable can lead to deletion of / directory in bash script. #!/bin/bash ... rm -rf /$MYPATH if $MYPATH contains values like " dir" or "dir /" it will lead to "rm -rf / dir" or "rm -rf dir /". And will…
igorp1024
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8
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3 answers

How to keep subtree removal (`rm -rf`) from starving other processes for Disk I/O?

We have a very large (multi-GB) Nginx cache directory for a busy site, which we occasionally need to clear all at once. I've solved this in the past by moving the cache folder to a new path, making a new cache folder at the old path, and then rm…
David Eyk
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6
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3 answers

Difficult to Delete Files in Linux

There's a lot of stuff about this on the Internet, but most of the examples there are contrived. How does one delete files that are really stubborn? e.g., $ find ./ -inum 167794 ./àKÈÿÿÿÿ@ $ find ./ -inum 167794 -exec rm \"{}\" \; rm: cannot…
mgjk
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5
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3 answers

How to Fix Directory with all Question Marks as Permissions

I'm using CentOS 7 and trying to list a directory's contents but can't. When I try to list the contents, I get the following output: [entpnerd@myhost ~]$ ls -ali /data/sharedlogs/otherhost/ ls: cannot access /data/sharedlogs/otherhost/vcs: Not a…
entpnerd
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5
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3 answers

directories with two one dot (.) entries

I'm trying to clean up my lost and found, and I've managed to remove most things, but I'm left with "almost" empty directories, like: lost+found/#14042862: total 1324 dr---wx--- 2 76040 43010 4096 2011-04-29 07:56 . dr---wx--- 2 76040 43010 …
Jayen
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5
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2 answers

can't git rm a directory

I accidentally added a directory to the list of items i'm supposed to git commit. Now when I try to run a git rm dirname, I get the error rm 'dirname' fatal: git rm: 'dirname': Is a directory I tried the following commands git rm -rf dirname and…
John
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