Linux

55463 readers

698 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

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

submitted 2 weeks 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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (7 children)

If ./ and ./*/*/* are both within your home folder, you should just restore it from your backup. The command you ran takes everything up to 3 levels deep and moves it up to the working directory, and unraveling that will be a pain in the ass.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

If the actual command was this .... mv /*/*/* ./ would moving stuff out of /boot or /dev folders make more sense?

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

Strange thing is, instead of moving folders (which isnt possible without root anyway) it looked like some of them got copied instead. Compared some folders from /boot/grub with the dump in my homefolder and they were the same files (number and names etc).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

My theory for why it created copies: The files you listed look like they are all subdirectories from /dev, which is (usually) a separate filesystem. When you try to move a file or directory across filesystems, the OS can't just change the link, it has to actually copy the files and then remove the original. As a directory is a set of links to files, and the copies are different files, directories are just newly created with the same name in the new location instead of copying the directory filesystem entry. It looks like mv creates these target directories, before it checks if it actually has permission to remove the source, but checks file permissions, before it copies them

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

That .... makes a lot of sense, thanks 🙏🙏

load more comments (3 replies)