[PLUG] How To Remove "Ghost" Files?

[Paul Heinlein]

On Fri, 8 Oct 2010, Rich Shepard wrote:

>   This morning's report on the dirvish backup reported errors of 
> files being removed before they could be backed up. This in a 
> directory that I've not accessed for several years so nothing should 
> have changed any files there. As a matter of fact, I've done nothing 
> in that partition recently.
>
>   Anyway, I cannot remove this spurious files as they have no 
> information associated with them when displayed. Here's an example:
>
> ?????????? ? ?        ?          ?                ? xdbctl_8h-source.htm
>
>   While I'd like to understand how these files became corrupted, I 
> don't need them so the more important question is how to delete 
> them.
>
>   I've tried, as root, putting the file name in double quotes but 
> the system tells me the file does not exist.
>
>   Your thoughts and suggestions on how to clean this up are wanted.

You might try deleting it by inode number:

# get the file's inode (e.g., 123456)
ls -i
# delete file by inode number
find . -inum 123456 -exec rm {} \;

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com