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Made a big(?) mistake with mv /*/*/* ./ (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by joeldebruijn@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Background:

I think I messed up ... Wanted to get a lot of files out of a nested folderstructure 3 levels deep and used mv /*/*/* ./ somewhere deep in my personal folders. I got a lot of errors and quick as I could stopped it. Now that folder is is messed up with a lot of stuff (see below) which I dont know the origin of. The good news: I have fairly recent backups

Questions:

  • Could they be from subdirectories in my home folder?
  • Could they be from subdirectories outside my home folder? Especially grubenv caught my eye.
  • Could it be potentially dangerous to reboot? I leave my PC on untill I know more.
  • Would it be possible to reverse the moving in some way, to put them back where they belong, even manually?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Files:

Sorry for the long list

0 1 10 10:1 10:125 10:126 10:127 10:130 10:183 10:224 10:228 10:229 10:231 ... 116:8 116:9 ... 13:81 ... 8 81:0 81:1 81:2 81:3 9 arch_status attr autogroup by-diskseq by-id by-label by-partlabel by-partuuid by-path by-uuid cgroup cmdline comm coredump_filter cpu_resctrl_groups cpuset fd fdinfo fonts gid_map grubenv limits list.txt locale loginuid map_files maps mountinfo mounts net ns numa_maps nvme0n1p8_crypt oom_adj oom_score oom_score_adj projid_map sched schedstat sessionid setgroups smaps smaps_rollup stat statm status task timens_offsets timers timerslack_ns uid_map unicode.pf2 usb wchan x86_64-efi

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[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago

I'd probably do a clean install (eventually) even if it looked like stuff works for now.

I know the pain, though. did rm -rf in the wrong directory and wiped half my drive in seconds. Good times.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 1 points 11 hours ago

Classic. I also did the rm -rf once in a wrong directory of a programming project. Luckily it was a subdirectory, so nothing important lost. But it could have easily if I was one hierarchy higher.

I am so much afraid of rm -rf, that I usually go in a directory with cd and rm in current directory those files only. And then I do rmdir on empty directories. I use recursive -r only, with specific directory names included (autocomplete helps). This way, even if I am in the wrong directory, the chance that there is the exact same directory name is a bit lower.

And I often also just switch to graphical filemanager to delete files. Not only that. Sometimes I also just move folder instead deleting, so I have a back up until I'm sure. There is also trash-cli.

[-] phantomwise@lemmy.ml 1 points 20 hours ago

Ouuuuch 😬

this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
32 points (100.0% liked)

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