> Eventually, that even didn't work and I was advised to do something > which turned out to be disastrous so NEVER EVER issue the following from > a root shell > > rm -rf $Home/* I cannot say enough bad things about whoever suggested this to you (If they actually did, which I really hope they didn't) I guess the INTENTION was to delete everything from the home area of some user account . However, 1. The first problem is if you are logged in as root $HOME (yes, all upper case, see point 2 below) $HOME evaluates to /root. So all you end up doing is deleting all your root account config/account files. 2. The environment variable $Home does not exist ! It is $HOME. So if you had a clue what you where doing, and had tried > echo rm -rf $Home/* first you would have discovered #[root@localhost ~]# echo rm -rf $Home/* rm -rf /bin /boot /data /data2 /dev /etc /home /lhcb /lib /lost+found /media /misc /mnt /net /proc /root /sbin /selinux /srv /sys /tmp /usr /var /winxp i.e. as you discovered this command eats EVERYTHING... Let this be a lesson. Chris p.s. I suggest ANY rm command you run as root should include the -i flag
