From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Mar 8 11:30:54 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from alpha.comkey.com.au (alpha.comkey.com.au [203.9.152.215]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7D67914FAE for ; Mon, 8 Mar 1999 11:30:47 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gjb@comkey.com.au) Received: (qmail 7073 invoked by uid 1001); 8 Mar 1999 19:08:31 -0000 Message-ID: <19990308190831.7072.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> X-Posted-By: GBA-Post 1.04 06-Feb-1999 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5A91 6942 8CEA 9DAB B95B C249 1CE1 493B 2B5A CE30 Date: Tue, 09 Mar 1999 05:08:30 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Chris Tubutis Cc: "Michael G." , "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: /var -- Device Busy References: <199903080329.DAA65700@out2.ibm.net> <36E34EB6.929EE4FF@tci.com> In-reply-to: <36E34EB6.929EE4FF@tci.com> of Sun, 07 Mar 1999 21:14:46 MST Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > Hmmm...I've always used rm -r to remove > > directories...didn't even realize there was a rmdir > > command...I guess there's many ways to do the same thing... > > :) > > Are you sure you weren't using rm -rf? Do the following and answer your own question: mkdir testdir touch testdir/file rm -r testdir Of course, if you are not root and if some elements in the tree are read-only, then you'll get asked about them without the -f flag -- but the -f flag will not allow you to rm anything that you could not rm without using -f (which means that -f has no meaning when used by root). -- Greg Black To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message