mdchachi <mdchachi@chachich.com> wrote:
> I ran the following in /tmp to clean out old files:
>
> find /tmp/. -mtime +30 -prune -type f ?exec rm -f {} \;
>
> the next thing I know, major portions of /etc are gone

I assume you mean '-' and not '?'.

The statement looks harmless enough; the -prune is a little weird, but
cannot do damage.
Not even a hard link to a directory could be the cause, as this does
not work across file systems.

Is there a chance to retrieve the statement you actually typed from
root's command history? There might have been a typo...

Yours,
Laurenz Albe