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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Made a big(?) mistake with mv /*/*/* ./ (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

If you ran this as a non-root user then you didn't move any system files you just made some copies. Delete the new copies and you should be fine.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Got chills down my spine initially but was a "good" scare .... the one which makes me carefull next time before any real damage is done. 🙈👍

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good thing everything is now fine. For the next time You use 'mv' or 'cp' or 'rm' and so on, replace this with ls to see what files abd folders You are about to move, remove, copy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Oh never thought about using ls to "test" things, thnx!