Further to my previous battles with /bin/rm,
something new-to-me that might help: ionice -- "get/set program
I/O scheduling class and priority". (Linux-only, I think.)
Running ionice -c3 /bin/rm ... should mean that rm "will only
get disk time when no other program has asked for disk I/O..."
(man page). That sounds about right.
Of course, ionice will not stop seek storms, nor will it leave
the disk heads in a place convenient for other programs that are
trying to do Real Work (TM).
NB: I have no empirical evidence that ionice actually helps
in cases where /bin/rm renders a machine otherwise useless.
