Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!csustan!polyslo!sdejarne From: sdejarne@polyslo.UUCP (Steve DeJarnett) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: `rm -rf dir' fails with Directory not empty Message-ID: <884@polyslo.UUCP> Date: 13 Dec 87 20:01:46 GMT References: <125@Edvax.UUCP> <1430@cuuxb.ATT.COM> Reply-To: sdejarne@polyslo.UUCP (Steve DeJarnett) Organization: Cal Poly State Univ,CSC Dept,San Luis Obispo,CA 93407 Lines: 36 Keywords: screwy files, bad inodes Summary: It is not necessarily because of . files I had a problem like this on an HP-9000 system recently. The problem was that there was a file in the directory that was undeletable. rm -rf didn't catch it, but things like find(1) and ls(1) did. fsck(1m) didn't notice it, so basically I was out of luck. What I ended up doing was emptying the directory, then doing an "od -dc ." which showed me the files in the directory and their corresponding inode numbers. Then I used fsdb(1m) to change the type of the inode of the file that couldn't be deleted to a type that signalled that the inode was unused. fsck(1m) then caught it and removed it (when I told it to). I'm not sure if that's you're problem, but it's worth a try. BE CAREFUL USING fsdb(1m)!!!!!!! Our version presumed that you knew what you were doing, so it didn't check anything that you did. It also did it in real-time (no undo features). Also, in response to another follow-up posted by someone at AT&T, I think that "rm -rf" should get rid of any . files in the directory. That is kind of what the purpose of "rm -rf" is (i.e. "Get rid of every file in all directories below the named one, including the named one"). The only problem I ever ran into with that was not having write permissions on some of the subdirectories below the one being removed. If you don't have write permission on the directory, rm won't remove it, and therefore, "rm -rf" will bomb when it sees that there is still an entry (a directory that isn't empty, or that can't be removed due to not having write permission) along the path. Make sure your permissions are right (although, if you are root, it shouldn't matter). Good luck. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Steve DeJarnett | ...!ihnp4!csun!polyslo!sdejarne | | Computer Systems Lab | ...!{csustan,csun,sdsu}!polyslo!sdejarne | | Cal Poly State Univ | ...!ucbvax!voder!polyslo!sdejarne | | San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #include