Lecture from the UNIX beards

- 1 min read

After the rm -rf /* disaster that hit me a couple of weeks ago I’ve been rebuilding my setup, restoring the few files I’ve had backed up, and collecting advice from the elders.

Turns out there are a few tricks that can save your home directory from accidents like mine. The first one is rather obvious, but I’m writing it down anyway:

  1. Keep separate accounts. If possible, use separate accounts (with different permissions obviously) for different projects. I had my private life and work life mixed up, so that’s a big no-no to begin with.
  2. Create a file called -t in your $HOME

The last bit of advice I’d heard about earlier, about ten years earlier, but completely forgotten about. The trick is to create a file that will be interpreted by rm as an unknown option. For GNU rm the -t is a good choice.

Here are two ways of creating such a file:

cd
touch ./-t

or, the perhaps easier to remember:

touch -- -t

Cheers!