Rm -rf / in Windows Subsystem for Linux reveals sharp set of teeth

Re:Rm -rf / in Windows Subsystem for Linux reveals sharp set... by MichaelGG on Thursday June 30, 2016 @12:20AM (#12006542)

I thought perhaps the Linux layer lets you delete/unlink files that are in use, unlike Windows. But I also thought this was pretty baked into the kernel/VM paging system.

If the Linux layer allows deleting and replacing in-use files, that's pretty cool and a welcome feature.

If this is just a substitute for deltree I'm not sure I get the point.

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Re:Rm -rf / in Windows Subsystem for Linux reveals sharp set... by shadowfox on Thursday June 30, 2016 @01:35AM (#12006787)

Windows (at least NTFS) does allow you to delete files in use as long as it has been opened with a sharing mode of FILE_SHARE_DELETE. Unfortunately most regular programs don't do this.

An exception to this is memory mapped files as they are not allowed to be deleted that way. Executables are executed in Windows by memory-mapping them; so runnning programs are hard to delete.

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Re:Rm -rf / in Windows Subsystem for Linux reveals sharp set... by piscisaureus on Thursday June 30, 2016 @01:41AM (#12006805)

Yes, but as long as the file is openen by another process...

- You can't delete the parent directory

- You can't create a new file with the same name

... which makes that flag quite useless.

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