Weird prefix unknown-00-11-24-22-67-14:~

[dmm607]

Hi, Please don't flame me I've googled first - but why is this in front of my username? (and dir) I have never seen it before but am new to terminal and want to learn.

I am trying to rm the .Trash (some locked crap) sudo rm -rf /* isn't working and this weird 'prefix' is in front of every directory. Have I hosed it?

Thanks
iBook OS X.4.11/iPhone 3GS

[Cabhan]

I'm a tad confused. Are you referring to your prompt? Your prompt in the terminal looks like:

unknown-00-11-24-22-67-14:~ user$

?

If so, "unknown-00-11-24-22-67-14" is most likely your hostname. You can change this to something more readable, and it's basically your computer's name on its network. The "~" refers to the current directory: "~" means "my home directory". You're on a Mac, so if you run the command:

cd /Volumes

Then your prompt should change the "~" to "/Volumes". It will always show you your present directory.

You can change the format of the prompt by setting the PS1 variable. Documentation is available at:
How to: Change / Setup bash custom prompt (PS1)

[Segfault]

sudo rm -rf /* isn't working

I think it would work in Linux ... bad thing, really. Most *nix systems will refuse.

[Rubberman]

Well, "sudo rm -rf /*" if it were to be executed would nuke your entire system. Also, /.Trash is the trash can for root (system administrator). You can empty it, but DO NOT REMOVE IT! So, if you had successfully executed the command, there would have been NOTHING left on your system... I doubt that was your intention.

Also, as Cabhan indicated, the string in the prompt in front of your user name is the system name (as far as the shell can tell) plus your location - the ':~' means "in your user home directory".

[Cabhan]

Ah, apparently I missed the part where you're running the command to erase your entire system.

The command that you are trying to run will erase every file on your computer. You probably want to be running the command:

rm -R ~/.Trash/*

You should basically never use sudo to rm anything, and you should probably never rm anything in the / directory.

[Rubberman]

So Cabhan, who amongst us has NEVER done this (forgetting we are root and located at /) - rm -rf *... ? I remember a couple of those "Oh, Shiat!" moments, wondering when I last did a complete backup of the system...

[Cabhan]

Oh yeah, I didn't mean that in a bad way. We've all had this happen many times . I had a friend once run "sudo rm -f .." instead of "sudo rm -f ." when he was in some subdirectory he had made under /usr. And I know I've erased things I shouldn't have .

Sorry if that came across in a bad way.

[Rubberman]

Oh yeah, I didn't mean that in a bad way. We've all had this happen many times . I had a friend once run "sudo rm -f .." instead of "sudo rm -f ." when he was in some subdirectory he had made under /usr. And I know I've erased things I shouldn't have .

Sorry if that came across in a bad way.

It didn't. I was just commenting and didn't mean to imply you were overly "harsh" to the poster. Hence, my smiley-face.