Cannot delete directory!

[Robert Finley]

I have a directory (named application) on a B.11.11 U 9000/800 system that I cannot do anything with.

drwx------ 5 root sys 96 Sep 9 14:55 application

I cannot get into the directory -
# cd application
sh: application: not found.

I cannot creat a subdirectory -
# mkdir /application/test
dir: cannot access /application: No such file or directory

and rm -Rf does not remove it and returns no errors. How can I get rid of this directory?

[Sundar_7 · Accepted solution]

May be there are some control characters in the directory name

# echo * | cat -v

Look for any control characters displayed

# rm -rf *application*

this should work

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

Looks like there are some special characters attached to the name. I usually try to use wild characters if possible to get rid of them. Try various combinations and see if any of them work. For ex.,

#ll -d applica*
#ll -d *plicat*

Make sure which combination works and then move it to another directory

#mkdir junk
#mv *plicat* junk
#cd junk
#ll

(make sure it is only the directory that is appearing) then remove the directory

#cd ..
# rm -rf junk

You can simply remove it in one step with just the wildcards, all the above steps are to ensure that you do not accidentally delete anything.

-Sri

[Robert Finley]

Bingo!
Great job. Thanks.

[Sundar_7]

What was the problem Robert ? :-)

[steven Burgess_2]

Hello

Another quick way to do this would be

ll -i (note the inode number)

find . -inum -exec rm {} \;

Steve

[Sundar_7]

But if you have some other filesystem mounted under your current directory, then it is likely that more than one file will match the INUM and thus you might end up deleting files otherwise you dont want to delete.

[steven Burgess_2]

use the -xdev option then