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Systemd-implementation of "rm -rf" Buggy, Could Erase Root Partition

posted by cmn32480 on Monday April 17 2017, @08:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the people-that-live-in-a-bubble dept.

Soylentbob writes:

Edit: The link.

There were lots of good titles for this submission, as in "Breaking news: Poettering clueless?" to finally disprove Betteridge's law, or "systemd surprisingly not as good as advertised" or "Breaking new: systemd broken" or "Poettering censors critics after epic fail".

Systemd implementation of "rm -rf .*" will follow ".." to upper directory and erase /

How to reproduce:
        # mkdir -p /foo/dir{1,2}

        # touch /foo/.bar{1,2}

        # cat /etc/tmpfiles.d/test.conf

        R! /foo/.* - - - - -

        Reboot.

After the issue was fixed, finally Poettering added this gem of wisdom:

I am not sure I'd consider this much of a problem. Yeah, it's a UNIX pitfall, but "rm -rf /foo/.*" will work the exact same way, no?

The answer to this question, as many clarified for him, obviously is a loud "NO!". After being told a couple of times in no uncertain terms, the thread was closed for non-developers

poettering locked and limited conversation to collaborators 4 hours ago

for which I proposed the "freedom-of-speech" department (although I admit it is a weak proposal).

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:11PM

    by digitalaudiorock (688) on Tuesday April 18 2017, @08:11PM (#495994)

    My first thought when reading the title was: Why on earth does an init system need its own implementation of rm?
    But then, this is systemd, the Borg init system. Probably I should be astonished if something has not yet been affected by it.

    Nothing surprises me (or anyone with two brain cells to rub together) at all about any of this, nor do the requisite troll apologists putting their $.02 in the comments here. Anyone defending what we're seeing here is being paid by someone or is simply a fucking idiot.

    It's been clear since day one the the intentional approach of the systemd devs, unlike the entire history of unix and Linux is basically is to NOT reuse anything prior, and to re-invent every possible wheel...because you know..."how difficult could it be?" and "what do a bunch of fucking old grey-beards know?". I guess they're starting to find out right? Arrogant know-it-all jackasses at work. Thank God for my systemd-less Gentoo systems.

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