rm -fr not deleting stuff

[Colin Law]

On 23 February 2015 at 23:17, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
> Got a weird one here.
>
> Not entirely an Ubuntu question, but it is Linux. I have a Synology NAS,
> and I wanted to delete some old backup directories off it. I create
> backup directories using rsync, hard-linking to unchanged files in
> previous backups. This reduces the size of each backup by re-using an
> existing copy if a file hasn't changed. Read the man page for rsync and
> look at the --link-dest option.
>
> 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.

Anything in syslog?  USB access problems?

Colin