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

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/


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  • (Score: 1) by UncleSlacky on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:29AM

    by UncleSlacky (2859) on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:29AM (#301318)

    Just FYI, both antiX and MX-15 are systemd-free (it can be added if desired) and based on Debian Jessie.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2016, @05:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2016, @05:45PM (#301540)

    There is also Calculate Linux, a binary distro with a Gentoo base.

  • (Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Tuesday February 09 2016, @08:25PM

    by purple_cobra (1435) on Tuesday February 09 2016, @08:25PM (#301647)

    Ditto Manjaro-OpenRC [sourceforge.net], an Arch-derived distro (well, Manjaro-OpenRC is derived from Manjaro is derived from Arch!). I use this on a little Celeron NUC with a cheap SSD and it's pretty good. Being largely Arch, you have access to all the same stuff (e.g. -ck or -pf kernels, etc).