topic Re: Filesystem question in Operating System - Linux

Filesystem question

Brian Shepard — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:38:55 GMT

I have a user who claims he did the following:

cp -r /u02/stuff /u102
cd /u102/stuff
rm *
cd /u102
rmdir stuff

He claims that the stuff directory was deleted
from both /u02 & /u102. I am unable to recreate the situation. Every time I try, I get the correct results; only /u102/stuff is removed and /u01/stuff is intact. This user is
very reputable DBA and everyone believes him.
Is this possible? The following is the config:
/dev/cciss/c0d0p12 /u02
/dev/cciss/c0d1p2 /u102

Any thoughts? I can't tell you what I really think, but I have seen some very strnage things in my life so I can't totally rule it out. I think he must have made a mistake and I only have his word on what he said he did. His .bash_history looks suspicious and I am not even going there. I have to take his word for it that what he told me is in fact true.

-Brian

Re: Filesystem question

Kodjo Agbenu — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:55:48 GMT

Hello Brian

Under normal configuration, this should not happen. However, make sure that there is no abusive usage of symlinks on your systems.
Best regards,

Kodjo

Re: Filesystem question

Abdul Rahiman — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 17:20:35 GMT

Like the previous response suggested, symlinks could be in play here. Otherwise it could be even a simple typo in the commands, (btw, everyone makes a mistake.. the grace is in accepting it and not repeating it..;- simple sysadmin 101, applies to DBAs too..:-)

regds,
Abdul.

Re: Filesystem question

Chris Eubank — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 17:18:45 GMT

For sake of trying to solve an obvious argument:

Nope. For this to work, he would have *had* to use the recursive switch with the RM command.

The only other way (other than the possibility of "stuff" being a symbolic link to another directory) that this could have happened successfully, is if the "rm" command is aliased to "rm -r".

If it *is* aliased, then you could have a much larger problem to deal with than DBA's that have the popular majority believing everything they say :)

Now that I think of it, if "stuff" is a symbolic link to another directory, they would not have been able to delete it with "rmdir". They would have received a message "rmdir: stuff: Not a directory"

:) Hope this helps