deleting directories with ??? in name

Walter walterk1 at earthlink.net
Fri Apr 9 15:47:25 PDT 2004


Hi Parv,

    It looks like another directory structure has appeared
in the ftp directory that Lynx does not "see" and that
    find . -inum <inode> -delete
does not delete.  It does have a dot as the first character,
with some other non-printing characters, but no "/".  I
haven't yet tried to delete it with emacs or Midnight
Commander.  Do you still want to look at it??  If so, as I'm
not overly conversant with tar (or too much else that's *nix),
please send me the 'tar' command you'd like me to archive the
directory structure with, and I'll send the result.

I'm not subscribed to the List, so please CC me.  Thanks.

Walter

Parv wrote:
> in message <40571A35.7040702 at earthlink.net>,
> wrote Walter thusly...
> 
> 
> I apologize for the late reply.
> 
> 
> 
>>Parv wrote:
>>
>>
>>> # find . \( -inum <inode-1> -o -inum <inode-2> \) -print0 \
>>> # | xargs -0 rm -rfv
>>>
>>
>>Thanks, but when I did:
>>ls -i
>>and then typed in the inode in the command (saved in an old List
>>e-mail):
>>find . -inum <inode> -delete
>>it didn't delete them.  Do you think your way would work where
>>manual command wouldn't?  But, they are gone now, so I can't try
>>it anyway.
> 
> 
> My _speculation_ is that if '-delete' option did not work from w/in
> find(1), i doubt that above quoted command chain would cause any
> difference.  I suppose, you also guessed the same.  OTOH, the
> description of -delete option does say...
> 
>   -delete
>           ... It will not attempt to delete a filename with a ``/''
>           character in its pathname relative to ``.'' for security
>           reasons.
> 
> 
> ...that is one thing to consider.
> 
> 
> It would have been fun to experiment w/ the offending directory
> structure.  Next time it happens, send me a sample/small tar'd copy,
> will you?
> 
> 
>   - Parv
> 



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