rm -fr not deleting stuff

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 09:01 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
> On 23 February 2015 at 23:17, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
> > Anyway, when I tried removing a backup using rm -fr dirname it deleted
> > heaps of files out of the directory and its many subdirectories, but
> > also issued lots of messages about being unable to delete directories
> > because they were not empty.
> 
> Did you look at one of those directories to see if there is anything
> special about that directory and what it had left behind?  That may
> well give you a clue.

Nothing special that I could see. But maybe I wouldn't have recognised
it. What would you consider "special"? I could see no commonality at
all. The more I think about it the more I think it MUST have something
to do with the hard-linking. Maybe that's a commonality; I might check
that.

> Is it possible files in the directories are in use when you are trying
> to delete them?

Nope. At least not any that would have been in use the first time - but
not the second time or the third time or the fourth time.

> You could try a re-boot to see if they then
> disappear.  Not sure about this though.

Problem survived a reboot. Also a USB detach/attach.

> I would however point out that I think that to use rm -rf on anything
> in any way related to backups sounds like a very bad idea.  It is much
> too easy to make a mistake.

Wimp :-)

No, you are quite right and I am using great caution. I am also not
working with even remotely current backups. These are from 2010 and 2011
and they are one of two backup sets with the same data. Even if I lost
the whole disk I wouldn't be too distraught.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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