rm -rf /

It is commonly said that Solaris 10 will not allow you to issue a rm -rf / command. Few get to try it, but it was being discussed in the office today, so I thought I’d try it on a virtual machine.

The classic rm -rf / gets the message “rm of / is not allowed” and a return code of 2. Some variations get the same, whilst others (such as cd /; rm -rf .) get no message, a return code of zero, but nothing happens. Here is a transcript:

$ ssh sunflare
Password:
Last login: Tue Jan 31 21:38:05 2012 from goldie
Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.10 Generic Patch January 2005
steve@sunflare:~$ su -
Password:
Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.10 Generic Patch January 2005
# bash
root@sunflare:/# df -h .


Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/md/dsk/d10        9.6G   3.6G   5.9G    38%    /
root@sunflare:/# rm -rf /
rm of / is not allowed
root@sunflare:/# echo $?
2
root@sunflare:/# cd /usr
root@sunflare:/usr# rm -rf ../
rm of / is not allowed
root@sunflare:/usr# cd /tmp
root@sunflare:/tmp# rm -rf ../
rm of / is not allowed
root@sunflare:/tmp# cd /usr/sfw/bin
root@sunflare:/usr/sfw/bin# rm -rf ../../..
root@sunflare:/usr/sfw/bin# cd /
root@sunflare:/# rm -rf .
root@sunflare:/# echo $?
0
root@sunflare:/# pwd
/
root@sunflare:/# df -h .

/dev/md/dsk/d10        9.6G   3.6G   5.9G    38%    /
root@sunflare:/# cd /dev
root@sunflare:/dev# rm -rf ../tmp/../
rm of / is not allowed
root@sunflare:/dev# rm -rf ../tmp/..
root@sunflare:/dev# exit
steve@sunflare:~$ logout
Connection to sunflare closed.
$