Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!um-math!hyc
From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Cannot Remove Directories created with MSH
Message-ID: <400@clio.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 12 Aug 88 05:55:28 GMT
References: <3348@druhi.ATT.COM>
Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu
Reply-To: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor
Lines: 31
UUCP-Path: {mailrus,umix}!um-math!hyc


[lot of talk about unremovable directories, possible association with msh...]
I had this happen on my hard drive once, though I know it wasn't caused by msh.
While I do use msh, I found the culprit to be a corrupt copy of DCOPY 1.91.
Hard to believe that a bad download (I presume that was the cause) would leave
me with a still executable file, but execute it did, and when I tried to use
it to extract from an archive, I got some interesting screen wipes, but no
extraction. Wondering what the deal was, I played around some more, thinking
possibly I was doing something wrong. i somehow managed to issue a "create
folder" command, and couldn't escape from it. Finally I just hit a space and
then return. it created a directory named space on my hard drive. This
directory was very amusing in it's properties - it wasn't empty - I could not
remove it. It had only a single entry within it - a directory named space.
Not even a "." or ".." were in it. I could open that folder forever from the
desktop, if it would've let me. But it didn't matter, 'cause after opening it
once, you could never close it and cause yourself to drop back to the root
level.

The fix was to back up my entire partition, and then play with some sector
editors. Also pulled out my (blech!) MSDOS Tech Ref manual, (to look up the
FAT format & such.) and after a few minutes of sector editing I got the
directory back in working order. It was a rude experience, to be sure...
Ah well, that's what you get for playing in a strange, unstable environment,
I guess. (Moral - *never* *never* try to perform operations that involve
writing to a disk when you suspect the integrity of your currently running
program, or your system memory...)
--
  /
 /_ , ,_.                      Howard Chu
/ /(_/(__                University of Michigan
    /           Computing Center          College of LS&A
   '              Unix Project          Information Systems