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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2016, @08:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2016, @08:25PM (#301646)

    What idiot would use that command? Maybe a noob that followed nefarious instructions found on the web, but I wouldn't. If I needed to wipe an entire drive I'd just delete the partition and reformat. Or use a DBAN CD. Or use a hammer and some lighter fluid. The only thing close to this I've ever had to do was a few bios updates, or other hardware flashing, but that's where you check 3 times before actually doing it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2016, @09:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2016, @09:46PM (#301695)

    That is an excessive reaction in the case where you find systemd on your system. Warranted, but excessive.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @04:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @04:07AM (#304461)

    Suppose I want to remove the directories foo1, ffoo2 and foo3. I mean to type

    rm -rf foo*/

    but I mistakenly type

    rm -rf foo* /

    and am screwed.