How to rickroll people that try to run "rm -rf" on your system
+Jul 28, 2016 -- Claudio Maggioni
++ I like Rick Astley late 80's songs, and you can see them here in my Spotify: +
- +
+
+ I like rickrolling people too, especially if they are trying to delete my entire
+ /home directory or, even worse, /. Since I learned
+ how to use the alias built-in, I wanted a way to prevent that
+ random people tinkering with my laptop (that I may forgot to lock) could
+ delete potentially important stuff, just for fun or boredom.
+
+ The method that I will show will lock any rm command runned in
+ both recursive and force mode, so rm -rf, rm -f -r
+ and rm -r --force are all blocked, even if they are runned with
+ sudo. I am going to alias the rm command in
+ /etc/profile, /etc/bash.bashrc and in
+ /etc/zsh/zshrc (I am a zsh user) so that the rickroll will be
+ possible from all users, even root and the ones with a brand new
+ .bashrc or .zshrc. Here is the code I appended to
+ those files:
+
rmAliasalias rm=/bin/rmAlias +alias sudo='sudo ' +# this enables aliases in sudo, see +# http://askubuntu.com/questions/22037+
+ Since alias is not able to control the flags of the aliases (see
+ here, we are going
+ to redirect each call of rm to
+ /bin/rmAlias, that would run the command if it is safe. I did
+ not use a function because it is a bit tricky to make that work with
+ sudo. So, let's see the code I put in rmAlias:
+
rmAlias
+#! /bin/bash
+# Rickroll whoever tries to desert this system, even root.
+# To achieve this, set the appropriate aliases even in
+# /etc/profile and similars.
+
+# Video played when rickrolling
+ROLLVIDEO=/opt/anti-rm/serious-video.mkv
+# it's just Never Gonna Give You Up on my system, but
+# feel free to customize this!
+
+rickroll(){
+ echo "Never gonna desert this system..."
+ xdg-open $ROLLVIDEO 2>&1 &
+ exit 0
+}
+
+while getopts ":rf-" opt; do
+ # Prevent '--force' to be detected as -r and -f
+ if [ "$opt" = "-" ]; then
+ OPTIND=$OPTIND+1
+ continue
+ fi
+ if [ "$opt" = "r" ] || [ "$opt" = "f" ]; then
+ if [ "$tmp" = "" ]; then
+ tmp=$opt
+ continue
+ elif [ "$tmp" != "$opt" ]; then
+ rickroll
+ fi
+ fi
+done
+
+for var in "$@"
+do
+ if [[ "$var" = "--force" && "$tmp" = "r" ]]; then
+ rickroll
+ fi
+done
+
+# If it's safe, just run rm
+/bin/rm "$@"
+exit $?
+
+ It may look messy to a UNIX guy more experienced than me, but it
+ works. The getopts built-in sees if both the -r and
+ the -f flags are used and, if so, it starts
+ rickroll(), which opens with xdg-open that amazing
+ clip from RickAstleyVEVO. From line 30 and below, the script checks
+ if the --force flag is used instead of -f.
+
+ Let's give execution permissions to the script we have just created: +
+ +rmAlias+# chmod +x /bin/rmAlias+
+ Restart your shell, and enjoy. If you want to test safely, I suggest trying
+ to run rm -rf with no folders or a nonexistant one, since this
+ script stops even these commands.
+
+ If you want even more security, you can rename this script to
+ /bin/rm and move the original one in some other place, getting rid
+ of all the aliases. I prefer the solution above because it's tidier: you
+ haven't to move anything. In fact, this could be just an AUR package...
+
+ 
+ 
+