new to ubuntu; have a few questions

[F.J.Zhao]

rm -rf /, for example. The command run as root will try to delete all
the files in the system without any prompt. Several days ago, a friend
of me logined his system as root and tried to delect a file in /etc.
But his made a mistake in typing before he pressed enter key. It was
too late when he found that, and he had to reinstall the whole system.

2006/11/10, Dwain Alford <dwain.alford at gmail.com>:
> On 11/9/06, Eamonn Sullivan <eamonn.sullivan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > You can make yourself root in any terminal window by typing:
> >
> > sudo -i
> >
> > And then entering your own password. Be careful with this, however.
> > It's easy to make a (irreversible) mistake.
> >
> >
> as a "former" windows user i enjoyed admin privileges to do what i needed to
> do with the computer.  this is what i want to do.  this command will do it
> for me?  before i do this, would you please explain what the irreversible
> mistake is?
>
>