The rm -rf Jack-o'-Lantern

Description

The photo shows a large orange Halloween pumpkin on a tabletop with a black marker-drawn jack-o'-lantern face. The left triangular eye contains the text "rm," and the right triangular eye contains "-rf," with additional black slashes, stitch marks, and a curved mouth completing the spooky face. The technical joke is that `rm -rf` is the famously destructive Unix command pattern for recursively and forcibly deleting files, making it genuinely scary to anyone who has ever managed a shell prompt.

Common Tags

TerminalCommands UnixCommands CommandLineShell UnixCulture TerminalLife DataLoss SysadminLife TechPuns Linux VisualPuns ShellScriptingLanguages Filesystem DarkHumor BackupAndRecovery

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick The scariest part is not the pumpkin; it's realizing your backups are mounted under the same path.

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

The scariest part is not the pumpkin; it's realizing your backups are mounted under the same path.
@Artkash 5y

that's pretty damn scary I have Linixophobia after that incident when my friend typed "rm /" instead of "rm /." Nothing serious tho, the only thing we lost was Minecraft server
1. @freeapp2014 5y
  
  Hmmm, I mean you can’t remove / not recursively and not as root
  
  @Artkash 5y
  
  Yeah, it was with -r
  
  @Araalith 5y
  
  And with ./
2. @lord_nani 5y
  
  F (
@Artkash 5y

Please leave me alone 😭
Deleted Account 5y

alias yeet="rm -rf"
Deleted Account 5y

sudo YEET="/" yeet $YEET
1. @chupasaurus 5y
  
  doesn't work since 2012
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  Why 2012?
  
  @chupasaurus 5y
  
  Addition of "--no-preserve-root" parameter
  
  @mvolfik 5y
  
  We don't mention this
  
  @AmindaEU 5y
  
  for safety of whoever will execute it?
  
  @lexanon 5y
  
  Yes, yes)
  
  @chupasaurus 5y
  
  kill 1 and shutdown -H are also fun and safe commands then (edit: -h as halt is fixed)