Unable to remove file using 'rm'

Question

In one of our severs (IBM AIX), we have a file in path /data/1002/ which we were not able to remove or delete using the 'rm' command. The error message we got is "rm: S1208001.002: A file or directory in the path name does not exist."

With the "-f" option, no error message was displayed, but the file is still there.

This file has a '0' byte size and when i use the command "touch S120801.002", i see two files with the same file name in that directory.

The directory listing is as below:

$ ls -l total 56
-rwxrwxrwx    1 oracle   dba               0 Feb 09 11:57 S1208001.002 
drwxrwxrwx    4 nobody   dba           24576 Feb 09 13:36 backup

How do I remove this bogus fie?

Thanks.

UPDATE 1

after using the touch command, the directory listing is as below:

$ ls -l total 56
-rwxrwxrwx    1 oracle   dba               0 Feb 09 11:57 S1208001.002 
-rwxrwxrwx    1 oracle   dba           77790 Feb 09 14:30 S1208001.002
drwxrwxrwx    4 nobody   dba           24576 Feb 09 13:36 backup

Answer 1

It sounds like this filename may contain a non-printable character. That would explain "touch" making a different file.

Try something like

       ls -b

in the directory to see if that's the case?

Then you should be able to do something like:

       rm -i S*2 

and it should prompt you for the file even with the hidden character.

Alternately, you may be able to use find to do this...

       find . -name S\*2 -exec /bin/rm -i {} \;

should prompt you for the files... I don't know if AIX 'find' syntax is unusual so this might not work, but the 'rm -i' part should let you abort the command if it's wrong.

Answer 2

You could try by inode. I am not sure what special char you've got going on there, but this might be worth a try:

$ touch badfile^M
$ ls -il bad*
   99 -rw-r--r--    1 username  group               0 Feb 09 04:39 badfile
$ find . -inum 99 -exec /bin/rm {} \;
$ ls -li bad*
ls: 0653-341 The file bad* does not exist.

Answer 3

There's a space at the end of the file (or some other unprintable character). Try selecting both lines in your $ ls -l output to see it. To remove it, you could try the completely safe find method:

dir=/path/to/your/directory

absolute_dir_path_x="$(readlink -fn -- "$dir"; echo x)"
absolute_dir_path="${absolute_dir_path_x%x}"

while IFS= read -rd $'\0' path
do
    file_path="$(readlink -fn -- "$path"; echo x)"
    file_path="${file_path%x}"
    echo "START${file_path}END"
done < <( find "$absolute_dir_path" -type f -name '*S1208001*' -print0 )

Then you can probably just add a rm -- "${file_path}" at the end of the while loop.

Answer 4

Possible the Filesystem hold the file until the last process stops using it or until the fs cleans up.

I've seen something similar on NFS mounted NetApp-Shares. Just wait a little and the file disappears.

Answer 5

I've experienced a similar problem and a simple fsck (and then rm again) solved my issue