Cannot delete a file

[MTSU_SAN]

I have a directory, with a file in it that I cannot pattern match--the octal characters show this:
frank:[/users/student2/0006/deleted] # ls -b
.addressb\033on\215lu .pine-de'Mg3

but no rm .a* or any rm .* will catch it:
frank:[/users/lu non-existenteleted] # rm .a*
You see how it wrote over the current line with the lu? Any ideas? I even tried deleting the inode, and that won't work either:
frank:[/users/student2/0006/deleted] # find . -inum 49196 -exec rm {} \;
It is still there afterwards, with no errors or messages. I would really like to clean this up, it is bugging me!
Thanks for any ideas,
c*

[Pedro Cirne]

Hi,

Try rm -i * and answer yes only on the file you want to remove.

Enjoy :-)

[DCE]

Have you tried using the GUI version of SAM? Under Routine tasks selection you can display a list of files, highlight the one you are interested in, and delete it.

Hope this is of some help

Dave

[Mel Burslan]

a little bit convoluted way of accomplishing this would be:


cd /users/student2/0006/deleted
mkdir /tmp/tempstorage
cp -Rp * /tmp/tempstorage
cd ..
rm -r /users/student2/0006/deleted
mkdir /users/student2/0006/deleted
(modify ownership and permissions properly here)
mv /tmp/tempstorage/* /users/student2/0006/deleted

with the same regex matching logic, files with offending characters will not match * and will not be copied to /tmp/tempstorage, hence when you remove the whole directory, they will be gone. After that you will restore the salvaged files back to the original location.

I am not sure why a* is not matching this file, but obviously, one or more of these offending characters do something like cursor location manipulation, causing you this much headache.

Hope this helps..

[Devesh Pant_1]

I have had success with the rm -i * command in the past.
One more trick that I use is

rm .a

Where is the escape key
Hit the escape key twice and that will auto complete the command and will automatically find the name with hidden/non ascii characters and complete the word.

tanks
Devesh

[Sandman!]

Jerry,

I tried deleting the file using its inode number and it worked fine. Here's what I did on my system:

1. ls -i ".addressb\033on\215lu .pine-de'Mg3"
2. find . -inum -exec rm {} \;
3. repeat step 1 to verify it got deleted

cheers!

[MTSU_SAN]

Thanks for all of your suggestions! Except for the sam one, I had already tried all of them, and they did not work! I thought I knew so much!
I will try sam, and also emacs (which allows a directory listing inside)--I wish I had thought of that before.
c*

[MTSU_SAN]

Nope, neither sam or emacs could do it either--those octal characters are cursor manipulators, and so interfere with the deletion. Any other suggestions?
c*

[Rodney Hills]

Could it be possible the file is on a NFS mount and you don't have permission to delete it?

Try-
rm .a* >/tmp/msg 2>&1
strings /tmp/msg

And see if any message you can't see on the screen is being displayed...

HTH

-- Rod Hills

[MTSU_SAN]

Thanks, this was a novel idea, but it is just saying:
frank:[/users/student2/0006/deleted] # rm .a* > /tmp/msg 2>&1
frank:[/users/student2/0006/deleted] # more /tmp/msg
rm: .addressb^[onM-^Mlu non-existent


which is what I get on the command line (but it is hard to tell since it is written over).
c*

[Mel Burslan]

just a wild suggestion:

set your term to "unknown" rather than hp or vt100 or whatever else. then try doing cat on /tmp/msg to see what characters are there.

then try constructing the file name using the esc sequences from the command line of your "unknown" terminal using ctrl-V then the ctrl-character sequences and delete it.

Again this is just a wild suggestion and it still at the end, your regex matching should not be dependent on what type of terminal you are using when you run an rm .a* command.

[Sandman!]

please post the output of the ll command in the dir where the file exists

thanks

[TwoProc]

run your ls with an octal dump to see the characters hidden in there.

ls -1 | od -c

With that you'll get a better idea of what you're dealing with.

But, the Mel's posting where everything else gets moved out, and then your whole directory gets removed should work for you.

Another trick...

rm -i ./* ./.*

or...

cd ..
rm -i ./deleted/* ./deleted/.*

Then answer yes for the file you want gone.

This is similiar to one of the previous posting, except that you're prefixing a directory in there.

[Rodney Hills]

Don't use the "more" command. Use the "strings" command to display the non-binary data...

-- Rod Hills

[Eknath]

Hi Jerry,

Try this
#mv ".address " 1234 (hitescape key twice)
#rm 1234

Hope this works.

Cheers!!!
eknath

[CAS_2]

As John Joubert suggest, I'd type:

ls -1 | xd -tx1 -tc

in order to get the characters of that filename.

Please, run that command line and post its output here.

[Muthukumar_5]

You can try as,


cd /users/student2/0006/
mkdir deleted_new
cp -ri deleted/* deleted_new

Press n for that specific file and move this new as old one.

rm -f ./.address*

hth.

[MTSU_SAN]

-rw-r--r-- 1 root sys 33 Jun 16 15:50 /tmp/msg
frank:[/] # strings /tmp/msg
rm: .addressb
lu non-existent
frank:[/] # cd /users/student2/0006/deleted
frank:[/userlu not found006/deleted] # ll
./.pine-de'Mg3 not found
total 0
frank:[/userlu not found006/deleted] # ls -l | od -c
./.pine-de'Mg3 not found
0000000 t o t a l 0 \n
0000010
frank:[/userlu not found006/deleted] # ls -l | xd -tx1 -tc
./.pine-de'Mg3 not found
0000000 74 6f 74 61 6c 20 30 a
t o t a l 0 \n
0000008

There are answers to all the requests for posts, still nothing works. There is only that one file in the directory, and rm -r of the directory won't work, so moving everything else out is moot. Do these outputs give anyone ideas?
c*

[Fred Ruffet]

What about using perl and its wonderful unlink command ? store filename in a variable en unlink it.

Regards,

Fred

[Rodney Hills]

I would guess the directory the file is in is corrupted. umount the filesystem the directory is in and run fsck.

-- Rod Hills

[MTSU_SAN]

Nope, already tried fsck, too.
I'm working on the programming end of it (perl).
c*