[PLUG] Folder creation/renaming quandary

David dafr+plug at dafr.us
Thu Feb 25 03:11:23 UTC 2016


On 02/24/2016 05:37 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 15:00:56 -0800
> David <dafr+plug at dafr.us> dijo:
>
>>> But I continued to get the same error message even after I renamed
>>> the file. Thus, the file and directory name were different. And
>>> Catfish said that no file with the same name as the folder existed.
>>
>> Having no experience with Catfish, I can't help you here. Perhaps the
>> filesystem has a phantom memory of a file or directory with the exact
>> name you are trying to create. To clear this, try to umount the
>> partition and run fsck on it. If that isn't possible, you may also
>> consider a 'find' on the directory with the _exact_ name as the target.
>
> It certainly is acting as though there is a phantom memory of a file or
> directory, so I had high hopes that umounting and running fsck would
> solve the problem. Sadly:
>
> jjj at Devil-Bonobo:/media/jjj$ sudo fsck /dev/sdc1
> [sudo] password for jjj:
> fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
> e2fsck 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
> Movies: clean, 5360/152621056 files, 264645440/1220942336 blocks
>
> After remounting the error message continues.

Well, quite honestly it was a long shot at best (IMO) and I didn't have 
a lot of faith in it, but something to try. It's still worth using the 
find to see what returns:

$ find /media/jjj/$WHATEVER -name "8½ 1963" -ls

This is just a sample that may return something, and then again it may 
not. There are a lot of options with this command, this is just a simple 
test.

> I discovered that if I replace the space with a dot the folder is
> created without error. I did not change the '½' character, so this
> should at least demonstrate that it is unlikely that my '½' character
> is the cause of the problem. And most of the hundreds of folders in
> that partition have spaces in them, so nothing is adding up here.

That is consistent with a file or directory by that exact name existing 
already and the system won't let you execute the mkdir as a result.

> At some point I must continue with my life, so I'm just going to leave
> folder with the dot in it and move on.

There is always that....

dafr




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