Executing this command on a Linux notebook can cause the device to permanently change bricks.

Last month, a user posted a question in the Arch Linux forum and asked why his notebook was completely out of order after running a simple "rm-rf-no-preserve-root/" command. Students with Linux basics should know that running this command is really stupid, but it doesn't usually produce any hardware destructive results. However, running this command on an MSI notebook may result in a thorough cleanup of the EFI boot partition.

The user, who posted on the forum, called "9233," said in a post: "Today, my friend and I ran the Rm-rf-no-preserve-root command on an MSI notebook because we wanted to solve the problem of arch installation bloat." Of course, we can also format the root partition and then reinstall Arch. (later he made a remark that instead we thought it would be fun seeing the GNOME installation die ...)

In fact, the path to damage the system is/sys/firmware/efi/efivars, which stores the information needed to launch the EFI standard (an old BIOS substitute). After the folder is destroyed, the device will not be able to start, the notebook is officially changed into bricks, can not be repaired.

GitHub has also launched a discussion on this, and developers are saying that the directory of EFI boot data should not be fully writable. Running a command can make the hardware brick. This is inherently unreasonable. The current issue seems to affect only the MSI notebook, because there should not be many people dare to make such an attempt, so about also did not attract attention.

But it is still a scary thing to be able to destroy a device so easily and completely, even if running the command itself is stupid.