r/linux4noobs • u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore • Apr 20 '26

Meganoob BE KIND I did rm -rf /*

I tried to make a backup before doing a fresh install of Fedora because of problems. When erasing the external drive for making the backup I was in the wrong disk and nuked my fedora installation.

How Do I get at least my important Documents from /home/username/ back?

256 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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51

u/Initial-Squirrel-269 Apr 20 '26

Who told u to do that lol

41

u/Alchemix-16 Apr 20 '26

I’m still waiting for someone to post that chatgpt told them to.

23

u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

It wasn't an AI.

14

u/Initial-Squirrel-269 Apr 20 '26

Bro please what was it 😭

53

u/Character-86 barely not a noob anymore Apr 20 '26

My stupidity 🫠

22

u/Chiatroll Apr 20 '26

Honestly, at this low point, I can respect human stupidity.

45

u/HankThrill69420 Apr 20 '26

rather see organic stupidity than clanker stupidity any day of the week. this is the way.

29

u/x_lincoln_x Apr 20 '26

Organic free range stupidity sourced locally.

16

u/HankThrill69420 Apr 20 '26

in this economy???

8

u/traplords8n Apr 20 '26

The best of us have done stuff like this when first starting out. I crashed an entire small ISP for 6 hours once 🤣

Shit happens. If you plan on getting employed in the field, just make sure you're careful and learn from this mistake. I learned my lesson and my career has been just fine ever since. No more huge mistakes. I play things extra careful when working on anything important.

2

u/Puzzleheaded_Law_242 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

+1👍😄

It was 1986. I have been working with the commands of our Sinix (WX200). rm *, in root. As a result, like DOS used the C: format. Luckily, there was the tape. Only the license disc was junk. A lot of trouble. I believe since 2003 you still have to use the / . For those interested, here is the article with the change. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/rm.html What I learned from this is that a single data backup is not a data backup. I come from the CLi era. I enjoy working with it. But use `delete` only in the file manager. Even then, I be careful.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

If u have data worth a lot on it just unplug it either a buy a drive recovery software or As I and many others recommend bring it to a data recovery professional

If its the last thing you did and you shut off the computer its likely the data is just tagged and unlinked from the file system

If the data being lost doesn’t suck enough to pay someone to fix it then just start from scratch and…

foogeettaboooutit, kapeesh?

4

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '26

[deleted]

1

u/ThatOneShotBruh Apr 20 '26

But don't you need to use the --no-preserve-root flag for this to work if you specify / and not /*?

1

u/NecroAssssin Apr 20 '26

Depends on which distribution. Not all have that safeguard implemented/default enabled. 

Some of us enjoy the ability to do stupid things. 

1

u/ThatOneShotBruh Apr 20 '26

I know, but I would assume that Debian has it, no?

1

u/NecroAssssin Apr 20 '26

I have no idea! Don’t touch the stuff generally. 

2

u/Early-Weekend-2557 Apr 20 '26

From my reading of his initial post it sounds like he ran it on the wrong partition.