(coreutils.info.gz) Treating / specially

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 2.10 Treating `/' specially
 ===========================
 
 Certain commands can operate destructively on entire hierarchies.  For
 example, if a user with appropriate privileges mistakenly runs `rm -rf
 / tmp/junk', that may remove all files on the entire system.  Since
 there are so few legitimate uses for such a command, GNU `rm' normally
 declines to operate on any directory that resolves to `/'.  If you
 really want to try to remove all the files on your system, you can use
 the `--no-preserve-root' option, but the default behavior, specified by
 the `--preserve-option', is safer for most purposes.
 
    The commands `chgrp', `chmod' and `chown' can also operate
 destructively on entire hierarchies, so they too support these options.
 Although, unlike `rm', they don't actually unlink files, these commands
 are arguably more dangerous when operating recursively on `/', since
 they often work much more quickly, and hence damage more files before
 an alert user can interrupt them.  Tradition and POSIX require these
 commands to operate recursively on `/', so they default to
 `--no-preserve-root', but using the `--preserve-root' option makes them
 safer for most purposes.  For convenience you can specify
 `--preserve-root' in an alias or in a shell function.
 
    Note that the `--preserve-root' option also ensures that `chgrp' and
 `chown' do not modify `/' even when dereferencing a symlink pointing to
 `/'.
 

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(coreutils.info.gz) Traversing symlinks

(coreutils.info.gz) Common options

(coreutils.info.gz) Special built-in utilities