What's the unix command to delete all files and any subdirectories?

Thanks in advance!

man mkdir and search for the options


mkdir -RF

ummm...I think mkdir stands for MaKeDIRectory.

The command you want to use is

rm -rf /path/to/directory

This is a *VERY* dangerous command. If you slip and type:

rm -rf / <enter>

(I get nervous every time I type that) say bye bye to your root partition.

-r=recursively
-f=forcefully

rm -rf dirname

(kinda like my sig )

EDIT: like Crashed_Again said ^

What are you my shadow? Ha just kidding. I hate when that happens as well. You type something and hit submit and then find that someone beat you to it. We are a good team!

caught me there guys, mind still sleeping i guess,

sorry for that

Also rm -R

hehe at least you were in the same realm as the question. I've given some pretty out there answers:

Question: How do you change your default theme?

Crashed_Again says something like: chown user file

Only by night!

That's whats cool about LQ - everyone works well together. I wish the non unix support companies that we "pay" at work were as good

I hear that. Some of them are just down right stupid although we dealt with Dell a lot and they were pretty good. The only thing that was bad about it was the hoops they made you jump through:

Have you checked that the cables are properly seated?
Yes
Have you checked that the power cables are properly seated?
Yes
Have you flashed the BIOS?
Arggggg just send me a new freakin hard drive!

Tell me about it. Dell were OK with me the last time - Next day delivery for a new hotswap PSU under warranty.

The worst system we have is Novell. It runs our mail server. (We are currently building a new linux one ) The "latest" problem with Novell is that we can't add user accounts. The name appears but the users database files aren't created. This has been on the go for about 2 months now. Accounts are sometimes created when the system restarts so we can "just" add new users. Our support company have had us rebuilding database files and repairing dictionary files etc etc. Now after 2 months their latest idea is to. Wait for it... "reinstall".

The other problem we have is with changing passwords. Im not sure if you have used Novell but you can access your mail using:
pop
imap
GroupWise
GroupWise WebAccess

The last 2 are propriatry. This used to work but now - when you change a users password they can't log in to pop, imap or WebAccess. This is despite the fact that they all use the same password file (or so I'm told).

The annoying thing is that "GroupWise" is a horrible piece of software that crashes PCs and we therefore don't use it. So to change the user password we need to change it in nwadmin (Novell admin utility), then login as the user and change their password "again" for them. After changing it the second time they can login by any means they want.

whew - that was a long post! Who knows maybe there is a Novell junkie hanging about that can figure it out

I worked for 6 months at a court house helping them migrate to a Windows2000 network. I saw some books on GroupWise and I asked them about it. They all cringed at the word. They had gotten rid of it right before I got there.

I don't blame them. I think our server may be going for a new record. I haven't had to reboot it for over a week

I work for the NHS and one of my colleagues has just moved to a different area and now works for their IT department. I spoke to him yesterday and they have 18 (yes eighteen) Novell servers ranging from Novell 3 to Novell 6. I was joking with him that they must employ someone just to reboot them. Then he told me that the week before he started the "root" server had crashed the and in turn all the other servers lost time and crashed too

I think the Novell philosophy must be "fallover" rather than "failover".