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