Re: ls showing deleted file, sorta

[Bernd Jendrissek]

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On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 02:17:42PM -0700, Tyler Mitchell wrote:
> I delete a log file like:
> $ rm /var/log/postmaster.log

It doesn't say "No such file or directory", so I'm puzzled.  Is rm
aliased to 'rm -f'?

What happens if you do
$ rm /var/log/postmaster.log.lnk
(just a guess), and then do the ls -l again?

> Then do:
> $ ls /var/log
> lastlog  postmaster.log  setup.log  setup.log.full  sshd.log
> 
> It still shows there, so I check again using:
> 
> $ ls /var/log -l
> ls: /var/log/postmaster.log: No such file or directory
> total 365
> -rwxrwxrwx+   1 Administ Domain A  3144744 Apr 28 09:34 lastlog
> -rwxrwxrwx+   1 Administ Domain A    94443 Apr 27 15:13 setup.log
> -rwxrwxrwx+   1 Administ Domain A   211575 Apr 27 15:13 setup.log.full
> -rwxrwxrwx+   1 SYSTEM   Administ      141 Nov 22 11:55 sshd.log

Do you have ls aliased to something else?  Please do
$ alias
and tell us if, for example, ls is aliased to 'ls -L'.  -L makes ls show
the symlink destination in ls -l.

> And it's gone!  Hmmm...was it just a timing questions?
> 
> $ ls /var/log
> lastlog  postmaster.log  setup.log  setup.log.full  sshd.log
> 
> Nope, still shows up when doing a wide listing but not a long listing.

BTW on my GNU/Linux system I once had a similar experience with a file
that was there but wasn't, but that seemed to have been due to
filesystem corruption after a power failure.  I had to rm -rf the whole
directory to make the problem go away.  (Fsck didn't see anything.
Odd.)

> Hope this helps improve the product.  This is Cygwin, Windows 2000.

You can't improve Windows, I think.  You'd need the source to do that,
or in a pinch a sledgehammer.

- -- 
http://voyager.abite.co.za/~berndj/ (up again for now - yay!)
I've generally found that the fastest way to get the right answer on the net
is to confidently assert the answer you believe to be right; those who know
will immediately correct you, while if you just ask, often no answers arrive.
All it requires is a willingness to look bad on occasion.
                                               - Joe Buck on address@hidden
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