Missing . (dot) file

[Art Taylor]

What could possibly cause an ll in a mounted filesytem to return, "...cannot find . file"

My email is art@comcar.com

[Mark Grant]

Being in a directory that some else just removed for example.

[Art Taylor]

the . (dot) does not show up very well, but that is the missing file.

[Bharat Katkar]

Check whether the file system is really mounted.
# mount
This will list all mounted filesystems.
OR
then you have empty filesystem but still it should atleast display lost+found directory provided you in root of the filesystem's mount point.

Regards,

[Mark Grant]

Art, you can try this yourself.

Session 1, log in and type

mkdir /tmp/delete
cd /tmp/delete

Session 2, log in on another screen and type

rmdir /tmp/delete


Sesssion 1, go back to this session and do

ll

"ll" needs the "." "file" (which is actually a directory alias for the current directory) in order to look through it to show you all the files in your current directory. In this case, however, it's not there because your other session removed it when it deleted the directory you are in.

[Art Taylor]

Here is the deal.

A bdf shows the filesystem mounted, but when I cd to the filesystem and do the ll, it stops at the point that the . (dot) file missing message is displayed. The filesytem actually contains 8 subdirectories of application information.

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi,

If you have a first session and be placed inside of /subdir_one/subdir_two. And you have a second session and removes /subdir_one, when second sesssion tries any command this message will appear because dot file makes reference at subdir_two structure and was deleted!

Rgds.

[David Johnson_6 · Accepted solution]

/holdit is a mounted filesystem.
There was nothing removed or deleted from /holdit or /.
after that first error "can't find "." file,
system crashed, and rebooted."
If you try to reboot with that disk in or mout the disk after reboot system crashes.

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Art,

Unmount the filesystem and fsck it.

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[David Johnson_6]

fsck says to run full fsck.
ran fsck -vxfs -o full.
Says needs to run full fsck does not clean.
Superblock missing

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi again,

Umount this filesystem and check if any directory or file structures are preserved inside.

Rgds.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Art,

I agree with R-J.
Appears you may have a corrupted inode table...IF...in fact no one has deleted that subdir's contents.
You're only choice now would be to attempt to umount the FS & run fsck -o full on it.....and hope your backup's good....

Rgds,
Jeff

[Mel Burslan]

looks like you got yourself a corrupted volume and it is time to recreate the volume and cross fingers for a good recent-enough backup.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Art..err...David,

There are multiple copies of the superblock.
If a single good one cannot be found...well...that's indicative of a drive that's no longer of this earth.
This is why mirrors are so useful. It's not a matter of IF a drive will fail - it's WHEN.
Hope you have a recent, good backup.

Rgds,
Jeff

[David Johnson_6]

Yes Art and I looked for a copy of the superblock but there was not one in /etc/sbtab.

[Art Taylor]

Start over here.

This all happened this past weekend.
/holdit was built as vg10
I copied all my applications into that volume group.
Saturday morning I cd to /holdit and ran ll and du -sk of the copied application subdirectories - no problems.

It was not until later that the missing "." file reared its ugly head on an ll.

Sam could see the filesystem and its only lvol.

I did a mount which promptly caused a system panic.

At boot time the system paniced again.

I removed the offending disk (it is in a Jamaica enclosure) and was able to finish the boot.

When I seated the drive and did a mount, the system paniced again.

Repeated the boot minus the disk.

Bottom line I had to recover my applications from tape. 9 hours later I was back in production.

So much for using a disk rather than tape.

[Art Taylor]

I appreciate the response, everyone.

I hope not to replicate this again. Just curious.

Have a good day, everyone.
Thanks.
Art