Well you can do a lot of damage quickly using very short commands. Deleting the master boot record can be quite effective, but I will demure from giving specific examples. On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Stuart Yeates <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > -- Because you can delete everything on the system with a very short > > command. > > This is actually a misconception. > > The very short command doesn't delete everything on the system. The > integrity of files which are currently open (including things like the > kernel image, executable files for currently-running programs, etc) is > protected until they are closed (or the next reboot, whichever is first). > These files vanish from the directory structure on the filesystem but can > still be accessed by interacting with the running processes which have them > open (or /proc/ for the very desperate). > > This is the POSIX alternative to the windows "That file is currently in > use" scenario and explains why, when a runaway log file fills up a disk, > you have to both delete the log file and restart the service to get the > disk back. > > cheers > stuart > -- Cary Gordon The Cherry Hill Company http://chillco.com