Timeline for How to delete this indelible directory?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
68 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 26, 2021 at 9:40 | answer | added | 2 B | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 21:07 | history | edited | Toothrot | CC BY-SA 4.0 | the undeletable is the capable of being undeleted |
| Feb 18, 2020 at 21:06 | comment | added | Toothrot | indelible. the undeletable is something capable of being undeleted. | |
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:36 | history | edited | CommunityBot | replaced http://unix.stackexchange.com/ with https://unix.stackexchange.com/ | |
| Jan 7, 2017 at 14:10 | history | edited | Jeff Schaller♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 | deleted 3 characters in body |
| Sep 17, 2016 at 15:07 | history | edited | Jeff Schaller♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 1 character in body |
| Sep 16, 2015 at 7:49 | answer | added | mvdnes | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jul 21, 2015 at 23:21 | comment | added | user124424 | Try deleting the filesystem, recreate it and restore your backup (assuming you have tested it) excluding the corrupt files / directories. | |
| Aug 3, 2014 at 2:44 | comment | added | Joe | +1 for persistence! And for thorough documentation of everything you tried. We don't usually get to see what didn't work, but it's often very valuable to know. | |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 16:25 | vote | accept | mike-m | ||
| Jul 31, 2014 at 16:23 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 240 characters in body |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 16:16 | comment | added | harry | Can you not delete the directory above it (rm -R 'parentdirectory')? What error does this produce? | |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 7:51 | answer | added | YoMismo | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 7:34 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 244 characters in body |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 7:28 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 244 characters in body |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 5:17 | comment | added | zwol | This may not reveal any new information, but: please post the output of strace -xx rmdir ./* | grep -e '-1 E' and strace -xx -e trace=file ls -li, executed from the directory containing the problem directory. | |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 3:50 | comment | added | vfbsilva | Can you use SED to change its contents? Doesn't dirs have some metadata you can edit? Like vim 'dirname'? | |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 3:37 | comment | added | bishop | No inode? Yikes. Does strace rm -r mike* (or some other reliable targetting glob) show anything helpful? From all reports, I think @derobert NFS theory is right. | |
| Jul 31, 2014 at 0:24 | answer | added | Timothy Martin | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 23:20 | history | edited | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | edited tags | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 19:47 | history | edited | Braiam | edited tags | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 18:42 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 280 characters in body |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 16:56 | answer | added | rsuarez | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 16:29 | history | edited | Anthon | CC BY-SA 3.0 | spelling, punctuation, formatting |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 16:20 | answer | added | walsht | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 15:50 | comment | added | derobert | @mike-m It sounds like you've hit an NFS bug, probably in the NFS server. Either that or filesystem corruption on the server. I doubt you can really do anything else other than wait for the NFS server admin(s) to deal with it. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 15:28 | comment | added | mike-m | @kasperd its a live production shared facility, and i will not have a chance to meet the admins till 0800 tommorrow, but the behavour is identical from two client machines accessing the same NFS space. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 15:26 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 449 characters in body |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 13:51 | comment | added | vinc17 | Note that the -f option of rm will hide most errors, in particular if the directory does not exist or cannot be removed. Thus it is a bad idea to use it here, in order to get diagnostic messages. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 13:46 | comment | added | kasperd | I suspect the directory only exists in memory on the client and is long gone on the server. Have you tried umounting it and mounting it again? Have you tried rebooting the client? Is it visible on other clients? | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 13:16 | answer | added | Abel Cheung | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 13:04 | comment | added | mike-m | @NateKerkhofs rl is empty exept for the problematic dir inside it, so that is the catch, if i try to delete rl, it rm will attempt to delete the bad directory inside it, of course i can rename rl, and move it, but the corrupt dir inside it is the troublemaker, and eitherway no delete happens until the bad dir is gone, :( | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 13:02 | comment | added | Nzall | How important is rl? Is it a root directory that is required at all times, or can you, say, move everything else to a safe location, try to delete rl and then put it back? | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 12:56 | comment | added | mike-m | @NateKerkhofs Thats actually a good idea, but i had tried that much earlier and it failed, and i had not included that info on the question, but i have added something on move now. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 12:51 | comment | added | Nzall | As someone with very little experience with unix and linux, here's my idea: try renaming the directory to something without those symbols using mv. maybe you can delete it after that. Alternatively, you can try moving the directory to a deeper folder level (maybe with a wildcard) and then deleting the folder you've moved it to. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 12:51 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | correct lsof invocation |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 12:44 | comment | added | mike-m | @kasperd yes, at the start of the delete effort i could, but look at the question and about the 5th edit i mentioned the behavior had changed, and i could not cd. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 12:38 | comment | added | kasperd | @mike-m Previously you said: "i can cd to it though and its empty", but the ls command you ran did not have the flags to display . and .. if they existed. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 12:19 | comment | added | mike-m | @kasperd im not sure whether it has . and .. since it will not allow a cd or ls in or on it, rename wont work for the same reason ls rm will not work (i tried rename earlier, but its not in my question, maybe i should add that output, ), i will talk to some priviledged admins and see how to proceed. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 11:16 | comment | added | kasperd | You say the directory is empty, but how empty is it? Does it still contain . and ..? A few ideas, which might be worth trying: rename the directory to an all ASCII name, or reboot the client, or even get an administrator to rename it directly on the NFS server. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 10:31 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 53 characters in body |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 10:19 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added lsof output for nfs comment |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 10:13 | comment | added | mike-m | @Learn yes, i have, here is the output: rl]$ rm -r mikeaâ\?\?cnt/ rm: cannot remove mikeaâ??cnt/': No such file or directory` see my comments on 3rd edit about the name | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 10:10 | comment | added | Thushi | @mike-m: Did you tried that command? What is the output? | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 10:06 | comment | added | vinc17 | @mike-m The latest edit of my answer should give you the explanation of ls output, and this would confirm a NFS-related issue. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 10:00 | comment | added | mike-m | @enedil this is an enterprise grade NFS storage, (possibly provided by netap*) | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:54 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 467 characters in body |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:46 | comment | added | mike-m | @HalosGhost its a shared facility, i did not set it up, i assume its a standard centos install, (other than that im not aware of any fancy customization of locale) | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:45 | answer | added | Nicolai | timeline score: 19 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:44 | comment | added | vinc17 | IMHO the issue is not related to the top-bit-set bytes, unless behind NFS there is a character-based protocol. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:44 | comment | added | Thushi | @mike-m: Can you please try this command rm -r mikeaâ\?\?cnt/. I guess you need to escape the question mark (?). | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:43 | comment | added | HalosGhost | perhaps this is system-specific, but I've always seen LANG set to en_US.UTF-8, not en_US.utf8. How did you set your locale? | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:41 | comment | added | mike-m | @HalosGhost i added info on the locale | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:41 | comment | added | mike-m | @Learn please see the 4th edit, | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:40 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 667 characters in body |
| S Jul 30, 2014 at 9:38 | history | suggested | HalosGhost | CC BY-SA 3.0 | fix up formatting |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:37 | comment | added | HalosGhost | What is the output of locale? The fact that your terminal is spitting out nonsense characters is a signal that there may be an issue with your locale. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:36 | comment | added | Thushi | Can you try this once rm -rf mikea*. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:35 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Jul 30, 2014 at 9:38 | |||||
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:32 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | added 426 characters in body |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:21 | answer | added | vinc17 | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:10 | answer | added | HalosGhost | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:05 | comment | added | HalosGhost | You don't want the -f option for rm. You want the -r option. Having both might be helpful, but if it's a directory, you need the -r flag. | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:03 | comment | added | mike-m | @HalosGhost there was no reason, see edit for added information on your question | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 9:03 | history | edited | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 | add information |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 8:57 | comment | added | HalosGhost | Is there a reason you're piping find's output to a different command instead of just using it's exec option? | |
| Jul 30, 2014 at 8:56 | review | First posts | |||
| Jul 30, 2014 at 8:57 | |||||
| Jul 30, 2014 at 8:53 | history | asked | mike-m | CC BY-SA 3.0 |