A deeper look into a steam-for-linux GitHub issue (https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671) investigating how a steam script was able to delete the entire contents of someone's root directory. While the direct cause of the rm -rf is fairly obvious, how it was triggered in the original bug report is not, and may forever remain a mystery...
Sources:
https://www.opensuse-forum.de/thread/10620-suse-ist-leer/?postID=70749 (buggy copy of steam.sh posted by "Acies")
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/steam
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:26 Steam on Linux
1:40 The Bug
2:58 STEAMROOT
6:04 reset_steam()
8:11 Valve theory
9:21 My "theory"
10:34 Fix
Corrections:
- At 0:56 the descriptions for /bin and /usr/bin are historically correct, but on modern Linux distributions (e.g. beginning in Ubuntu 19.04), /bin is replaced with a symlink to /usr/bin (in a transition called "merged /usr" or "/usr merge") so both contain the same contents.
Music:
- We Shop Song by Philip Milman
- Blue Mood by Robert Munzinger
- Aloft by LEMMiNO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNEKdkB_kdc)
- Firecracker by LEMMiNO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulfoU2MziOc)
- Cool Vibes by Kevin MacLeod
- Financial Obligations by Philip Milman
It’s not clickbait. The Linux version of Steam consisted of a binary, as well as a script called steam.sh which could be used to launch Steam. There actually was a line in that script with a comment above it saying
# Scary!. The script was not supposed to rm -rf the entire hard drive, but if something went wrong, exactly that happened.Didn’t say the content was, the image itself is clickbaity.
Well, it’s not if it’s the actual code Steam shipped with on thumbnail.