Linux: Can't delete a folder or its contents

Server Config
1

Okay, this is a first for me, but I can’t delete this one folder and its contents on my NAS and it just blows my mind.

Here is the output of ls -la and the delete command:

$ ls -la
drwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family         0 Sep  3 21:44 myweirdfiles-NoGrp
$ ls -la myweirdfiles-NoGrp/
total 1308696
drwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family        0 Sep  3 21:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 cpradio family        0 Sep 20 20:55 ..
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 09:51 myweirdfile._.part01.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 09:52 myweirdfile._.part02.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 09:54 myweirdfile._.part03.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 09:55 myweirdfile._.part04.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 09:57 myweirdfile._.part05.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 09:58 myweirdfile._.part06.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:00 myweirdfile._.part07.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:01 myweirdfile._.part08.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:02 myweirdfile._.part09.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:04 myweirdfile._.part10.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:05 myweirdfile._.part11.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:07 myweirdfile._.part12.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 99614720 Jun 27 10:08 myweirdfile._.part13.rar
-rwxr-xr-x 0 cpradio family 45109370 Jun 27 10:09 myweirdfile._.part14.rar
$ sudo rm -vRf myweirdfiles-NoGrp/
[sudo] password for user: 
rm: cannot remove `myweirdfiles-NoGrp': Directory not empty

Even when I rm a specific file, it doesn’t actually get deleted… (it states, no such file or directory)

$ sudo rm myweirdfiles-NoGrp/myweirdfile._.part01.rar 
rm: cannot remove `myweirdfiles-NoGrp/myweirdfile._..part01.rar': No such file or directory

Thoughts?

2

The closest thing I ever encountered like this was when I noticed a file using my site host’s FTP panel.

Ended up it was a “symbolic link”.

3

I know nothing about this stuff, so this is probably no help, but going on the title alone, I occasionally have that problem, and for me it’s a permissions thing. I have to go in and change the permissions on the file or directory to delete it.

4

Definitely isn’t a symbolic link, that would have been apparent in the ls -la command.

Yeah, but sudo should trump any permission issues shouldn’t it? If I can’t delete it using sudo and root is disabled… what is left? I’ve never had this happen to me before… Granted, maybe I need to actually login to the NAS directly to see if I can’t remove it there and it is a CIFS issue… hmm… I’ll try that real quick.

5

Okay, still can’t delete them, but now I know why! They have an odd character in the filename. Here is the FTP output

ftp> mdelete myweirdfile.*
mdelete myweirdfile.�.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part08.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part09.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part09.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part07.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part07.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part05.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part05.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part03.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part03.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part13.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part13.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part10.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part10.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part12.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part12.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part11.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part11.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part04.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part04.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part14.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part14.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part02.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part02.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part01.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part01.rar: No such file or directory
mdelete myweirdfile.�.part06.rar? y
550 myweirdfile.�.part06.rar: No such file or directory

Anyone know how to deal with these? It seems to be a unicode/ascii issue (maybe)

6

Got it! Oddly enough, connecting to the NAS over a shared folder and deleting it from a Windows box works. Strange that I can’t delete it from a Linux box or on the NAS itself… Whatever Windows sent as the delete command worked like a charm!

7

I guess it would have worked by escaping the weird character with \, like:

rm -f myweirdfiles-NoGrp/myweirdfile.\\_.part01.rar

Where “_” would be the weird char.

8

Nope. Did that plenty of times, the files always remained. I still haven’t a clue what character or encoding the character was in that caused it to not be deleted on Linux, but now that it is gone, I’m happy :slight_smile:

Part of the issue could be that I couldn’t tell what the character was supposed to be, so I could never match the filename. What really strikes me as odd, is even telling it to remove ALL of the files via wildcard didn’t work…

9

Well, rm still reads each single file name and apparently the charset was that messed up, that none of the pipes was able to read/process it properly. Another option would have been to just move the upper folder to /dev/null.

10

I’ll have to try that should this ever happen again. :slight_smile: That is one thing I didn’t consider trying.

11

I’m quite certain this would have worked, as it wouldn’t have processed each single file, but only the location of the folder. Glad I was able to figure something you didn’t try. :slight_smile:

12

Another tool, mc (midnight commander) from the command line usually can delete files with unusual characters in the filename too.