Is there a command line like this?

Downy · Feb 27, 2011

Is there a command line that someone types in and it just clears out their whole hard drive? kinda like deleting system 32 on a windows?

cwa107 · Feb 27, 2011

Not as an ordinary user. You would need to use sudo (and your admin password) to escalate permissions and from there you could do some damage with any number of different commands. But we won't be going into that here as there's no practical use for it.

Downy · Feb 27, 2011

cwa107 said:
Not as an ordinary user. You would need to use sudo (and your admin password) to escalate permissions and from there you could do some damage with any number of different commands. But we won't be going into that here as there's no practical use for it.

can you please help me? i understand that sudo means you go out of the boundaries that mac has set for you and it makes you take actions that only people that know what they are doing should take. but can you tell me the command line that would wipe out the hard drive?

cwa107 · Feb 27, 2011

Downy said:
can you please help me? i understand that sudo means you go out of the boundaries that mac has set for you and it makes you take actions that only people that know what they are doing should take. but can you tell me the command line that would wipe out the hard drive?

Sure thing. Just tell me what you're trying to accomplish. I can see no practical reason other than to mess with somebody else. If you're just trying to wipe your own system to start clean, there are much better and more straightforward ways to do so.

Downy · Feb 27, 2011

cwa107 said:
Sure thing. Just tell me what you're trying to accomplish. I can see no practical reason other than to mess with somebody else. If you're just trying to wipe your own system to start clean, there are much better and more straightforward ways to do so.

no no of course not! its just i was reading something about adjusting a WoW add-on and it said to type in a sudo command and stupid me, i type it in and my computer freezes. i restart my computer and all i get is a white screen with my hard drive showing and a "?" on it. i went to the apple store and thankfully all i had to do was insert my cd's that came with the computer and everything is running. the only problem is i cant find the place where i found that command line and im very curious as to what i did. so if you can tell me the command line that does that to your computer maybe i can remember if thats the one i typed in or if i just did something rong and didnt type it in write.

cwa107 · Feb 27, 2011

Downy said:
no no of course not! its just i was reading something about adjusting a WoW add-on and it said to type in a sudo command and stupid me, i type it in and my computer freezes. i restart my computer and all i get is a white screen with my hard drive showing and a "?" on it. i went to the apple store and thankfully all i had to do was insert my cd's that came with the computer and everything is running. the only problem is i cant find the place where i found that command line and im very curious as to what i did. so if you can tell me the command line that does that to your computer maybe i can remember if thats the one i typed in or if i just did something rong and didnt type it in write.

There are many commands that can do such a thing. It would be nigh-impossible to guess at which one did it to you with any degree of accuracy.

Downy · Feb 27, 2011

cwa107 said:
There are many commands that can do such a thing. It would be nigh-impossible to guess at which one did it to you with any degree of accuracy.

is there a one thats commonly used/known?

cwa107 · Feb 27, 2011

Downy said:
is there a one thats commonly used/known?

Nope, because purging a hard drive for legitimate purposes is typically done from Disk Utility.

Downy · Feb 27, 2011

cwa107 said:
Nope, because purging a hard drive for legitimate purposes is typically done from Disk Utility.

not quite sure wat purging a hard drive means... care to explain?

cwa107 · Feb 27, 2011

Downy said:
not quite sure wat purging a hard drive means... care to explain?

Like removing files/data from a drive.

Downy · Feb 27, 2011

cwa107 said:
Like removing files/data from a drive.

can you just tell me the command line to wipe out a hard drive please

cwa107 · Feb 27, 2011

Downy said:
can you just tell me the command line to wipe out a hard drive please

Sorry, no. As I've explained there isn't any one command. There are many ways to wipe a drive with the Terminal. After all, the commands that run there are the functional equivalent of the GUI-based utilities built into the OS.

Your system appears to be back in order and I believe you've learned your lesson with using 'sudo', particularly when you don't understand what the command does. Best advice here would be to keep this in mind for the future.

I think we're done here (well, at least I am

). Best of luck to you.

vansmith · Feb 27, 2011

Downy said:
can you just tell me the command line to wipe out a hard drive please

Downy said:
no no of course not! its just i was reading something about adjusting a WoW add-on and it said to type in a sudo command and stupid me, i type it in and my computer freezes.

Why not just go back to that article and see what it said there?

As a piece of advice - if someone tells you to execute something and you don't know what it is, don't do it especially if you are unfamiliar with the command line.

Raz0rEdge · Feb 27, 2011

There is one command that can recursively and forcibly remove files and directories..and that's "rm"..couple that with the "sudo" command and the path of "/" and it's very easy to wipe out the contents of your HD..

As @Vansmith said, don't run commands that you don't understand..

Regards

Is there a command line like this?

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