At 9:03 AM -0700 8/6/06, Richard England wrote: >Eric Donkersloot wrote: >> On Sun, 2006-08-06 at 10:49 -0400, Croombe F. Pensom wrote: >> >>> .... I was advised to do something >>> which turned out to be disastrous so NEVER EVER issue the following from >>> a root shell >>> >>> rm -rf $Home/* >>> >> >> Are you sure you executed the command above ? This would mean you >> deleted the /root directory and all its contents. Are you sure you >> didn't delete your personal home dir and everything in it ? >> Anyway, I guess you've learned your lesson, don't just copy and execute >> commands (especially rm commands) from a root shell. >> >> >>> As I found to my bitter cost, this ERASED EVERYTHING including my data >>> files on my USB memory stick and these were my day-to-day operating >>> needs such as : e-mail addresses, snail-mail addresses and phone numbers >>> etc., Firefox bookmarks, financial records and so on. I was DEVASTATED >>> to say the least. Now, following a complete re-install of FC5 I'm glad >>> to say I'm back in business and slowly recovering about 90% of my data >>> from old files saved to Zip disk. >>> >>> Croombe Pensom >>> >>> >>> >I think I would have learned to stay far away from the individual who >gave me the recommendation to use rm -rf $HOME/* > >He may have thought it was a joke but people like that should not be >allowed to frequent public gatherings or communicate with anyone without >adult supervision. They are twisted, immature individuals. They may also have actually said to do something slightly different: rm -rf $HOME/.* That would get all the .configuration files, even for other applications. I'd have suggested trying a new user first, and it that worked, mv'd the dot files out of the way. There are many things that can destroy all one's files. One always needs backups. For a safer command to see what's up, try: ls -d $HOME/.* ____________________________________________________________________ TonyN.:' <mailto:tonynelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> ' <http://www.georgeanelson.com/> -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list