Re: rm(1) bug, possibly serious

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:55 +0100, jan.grant wrote:

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Oliver Fromme wrote:

Note that the command "rm -rf ../" was entered twice.
The first time I got an error message (and exit code 1),
the second time it apparently succeeded.

Check the man page for rm:

-f Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirma-
tion, regardless of the file's permissions. If the file does
not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the
exit status to reflect an error.

That's what's happening the second time through. The first time, your
current directory is getting removed (so ../ won't refer to a real
directory the second time around). The bug is really in rm(1)'s initial
diagnostic message.


Just wanted to point out that this actually goes all the way back as far as 4.6.2-RELEASE-p27. I dont have any earlier machines than that to test
on but best guess is that it most likely goes back further than that.

--

- (2^(N-1))

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