[falcolas]

   rm --preserve-root

isn't a bad thing to have either. That way, even if you do screw up, you won't be able to run rm against '/', even with '-f'.

It's one of the top aliases in my .bash_aliases file.

[colanderman]

Agreed. Thankfully this is the default on many systems (I'm guessing recent coreutils).

Unfortunately dumb lines like "rm -rf $HOME/$STEAMDIR" still get through unscathed.

[philh]

I think that

    rm --preserve-root -rf /*

doesn't save you.

[colanderman]

You are quite correct.