How to delete a non existant file?

[Robert Brockway]

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007, Martin Duclos wrote:

>
> I have a directory that contains a file
> ?---------   ? ?       ?            ?            ? 1184898963.V901I2e6138
> I can't delete this file. I can't delete the directory either. I'm think a file system check might fix it but I'd rather not have to take the system down. It's a remote server and I don't have physical access to it. I has no inode, no permission, no owner. I suspect this happened when the box went down because of bad ram a while back. Any ideas?

I agree with the others that it is likely FS corruption and a fsck may be 
needed.  Now you could mount the FS read-only and fsck from there but 
you'd need to shutdown any processes with any files on the FS open for 
write.  This can be done remotely but isn't necessarily the best approach.

In these situations I have someone local insert a Knoppix cdrom (and 
knowing the box will boot from cdrom) I reboot the server.  If you are 
using a Vanilla Knoppix cdrom you have to get someone to start sshd.  I 
have built a custom Knoppix cdrom which starts sshd on boot but only 
allows access via PKI authentication - my public keys are all setup within 
Knoppix of course.

Another thing to consider here is that if DHCP is not enabled the network 
settings would either need to be hard wired on the Knoppix cdrom or 
someone would need to set it for you from the console.

Once the box has booted off the cdrom and access via ssh is obtained you 
are free to do whatever you want to the box.

Cheers,

Rob

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