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SystemD Mounts EFI pseudo-fs RW, Facilitates Permanently Bricking Laptops, Closes Bug Invalid

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday February 09 2016, @02:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the why-oh-why dept.

linuxrocks123 writes:

A number of users have reported that running "rm --no-preserve-root -rf /" not only deletes all their files (as expected), but also permanently bricks their computers (which is not). Tracing the issue revealed that the ultimate cause was that SystemD mounted the EFI pseudo-fs as read-write even when this FS was not listed in fstab, and deleting certain files in this pseudo-fs causes certain buggy, but very common, firmware not to POST anymore. A user reported this bug on SystemD's GitHub issue tracker, asking that the FS be mounted read-only instead of read-write, and said bug was immediately closed as invalid. The comment thread for the bug was locked shortly after. Discuss.

Links:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/02/01/running-a-single-delete-command-can-permanently-brick-laptops-from-inside-linux/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday February 09 2016, @06:49AM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday February 09 2016, @06:49AM (#301232) Journal

    I've only ever did a rm -rf / for shitsngigglesy

    As do probably 80% of all Linux starters at least ones or twice, for exactly the same reason. Linux was not only a great operating system, but also a great learning experience once. It invited to try things, to tinker around, to break things, and at least for the past 10 years to always be able to just start from scratch easily, because setting up a new system is a matter of minutes,

    Now I have to tell my son to never try anything without spending hours on reading documentation for potential risks?

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  • (Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday February 09 2016, @06:00PM

    by mrchew1982 (3565) on Tuesday February 09 2016, @06:00PM (#301549)

    No, he just has to learn how to tear apart the system and reflash the chip using a jtag adapter... ;-)

    • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday February 09 2016, @08:12PM

      by q.kontinuum (532) on Tuesday February 09 2016, @08:12PM (#301641) Journal

      And that would work without

      without spending hours on reading documentation for potential risks

      ? I'm not sure I buy that...

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