Become a Member ![\\"snopes](\\"/design/images/logo-main.png\\"/) Search My Profile Logout Submit a Rumor Latest Trending News & Politics Entertainment Fact Checks Quiz Sections Latest Trending Fact Checks News Collections More Contact Us Submit a Rumor Archives Quiz FactBot Newsletters About Us Categories News & Politics Entertainment Science & Technology Lifestyle Free accounts support our journalism Become a Member Login My Profile Logout ![\\"republican_symbol\\"](\\"/design/images/republican_symbol.png\\"/) Snopes fact-checked the vice presidential debate live! Read more here ![\\"democrat_symbol\\"](\\"/design/images/democrat_symbol.png\\"/) Fact Check # Man Deletes Entire Company with One Line of Code ## The original story, says its creator, was a viral marketing scheme to promote his server management company. ### Brooke Binkowski ### Published April 17, 2016 ![\\"](\\" Image courtesy of Matt Mets/Flickr Claim: A man deleted his entire company with one line of code. Rating: False About this rating A man who asked for help on a server forum, claiming that he had deleted his entire company with just one line of code, now says the whole thing was a stunt. Marco Marsala had originally posted the following plea on a question and answer site for system and network administrators. Advertisement: > I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use > Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers. Last night I > accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} > with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line. All > servers got deleted and the offsite backups too because the remote storage > was mounted just before by the same script (that is a backup maintenance > script). His situation (i.e., that he had deleted all of his serves and backups with an errant rm command) was so awful, and so believable, that his post received widespread attention, particularly from users who pointed out that he was at fault for not properly backing up his files. The sudo rm -rf / command is famously destructive, but — happily for Marsala\'s clients — this particular situation was a hoax. Marsala admitted to making up the scenario in order to promote his small company, which (naturally) provides outsourced server management services. \"It was just a joke,\" Marsala told Italian news outlet La Repubblica (translated): > The command that I mentioned in the article is harmless but it seems that > almost no one has noticed ... With the inaccuracies that are in the online > comments I could write a book. > > The Ansible tool prevents these errors. Almost every serious administrator > uses it, but among those who answered, no one seemed to know that, otherwise > they would know that what I have described could not happen. Advertisement: Marsala said he is also working on a \"Unix for Dummies\" book, and that the situation he described actually did happen, but to someone else \"before 2006.\" ### By Brooke Binkowski Brooke Binkowski is a former editor for Snopes. ## Article Tags Programming Viral Marketing Recommendations Advertisement: ![\\"Snopes.com\\"](\\"/design/images/logo-main.png\\") Company About Us FAQs Contact Us Submit a Topic Navigate Home Search Archive Newsletters Random Sections Latest Top Fact Checks News Account Join Login Game FactBot Like Us on Facebook Follow Us on Twitter © 1995 - 2024 by Snopes Media Group Inc. This material may not be reproduced without permission. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com Terms of Use Privacy Policy DMCA Policy
A man deleted his entire company with one line of code