Delete folder with empty (?) file name

Question

It looks like I have a folder containing a folder with empty file name.

$ ls -alF Antonin_Dvorak/
total 12
drwx------ 3 VUW\me VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 /
drwx------ 3 VUW\me VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 ./
drwx------ 3 VUW\me VUW\domain users 4096 Aug 25 11:10 ../

It does show up as empty in python.

$ python
Python 3.5.2 |Anaconda 4.2.0 (64-bit)| (default, Jul  2 2016, 17:53:06) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-1)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> os.listdir()
['']
>>> len(os.listdir('Antonin_Dvorak')[0])
0

When I switch into the directory and run ls, I get an error

$ cd Antonin_Dvorak
$ ls
ls: cannot access '': No such file or directory

$ ls -alF
ls: cannot access '': No such file or directory
total 8
d????????? ? ?             ?                   ?            ? /
drwx------ 3 VUW\kaipingga VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 ./
drwx------ 3 VUW\kaipingga VUW\domain users 4096 Aug 25 11:10 ../

I assume that at some point, the file name may have been an album/music title containing cyrillic characters, but in the meantime moving the folder to a different fs, moving it to trash, and a distribution upgrade happened. The filesystem containing this folder is

$ mount | grep grep $(pwd | head -c 9)
/etc/auto.master.d/issc_nfs_homedir.conf on /vol/home type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=6,pgrp=1310,timeout=300,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
vuwunix01:/vol/vfiler_vuwunix01_data01/users on /vol/home type nfs4 (rw,nosuid,relatime,vers=4.0,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,port=0,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=krb5,clientaddr=132.229.239.78,local_lock=none,addr=132.229.18.60)

I do not want to recover the content, I just want to delete that whole Antonin_Dvorak folder.

$ cd ..; rm -rf Antonin_Dvorak/
rm: cannot remove 'Antonin_Dvorak/': Directory not empty

I do not have root access to this machine at the moment, and note that this is on a network share. What should I do?

Wait, what? I'll edit this into the question body, but:

$ ls -ial Antonin_Dvorak/
total 12
24005685 drwx------ 3 VUW\kaipingga VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 
24005685 drwx------ 3 VUW\kaipingga VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 .
47956345 drwx------ 3 VUW\kaipingga VUW\domain users 4096 Aug 25 11:10 ..
$ #So, no surprise here:
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -inum 24005685 -delete
find: cannot delete ‘./Antonin_Dvorak’: Directory not empty

It's not just a nameless random folder. It's a nameless hard link to the folder itself??

Try to copy files/directories from parent directory to other directory and remove entire parent directory with rm -rf — mrc02_kr, Aug 25 '17 at 09:39
@Kusalananda Right, I should have read to the end. But if rm -r doesn't get rid of it I suppose nothing except for fsck will. — Hauke Laging, Aug 25 '17 at 10:09
This is on a network (SMB probably) share. So either the exported directory is corrupt and it should be fixed on the server side (the one that shares the directory) or your local SMB driver (the one that mounts it) has a bug and it should be updated. — xhienne, Aug 25 '17 at 10:30
I agree with xhienne -- this is not a duplicate of "How can I delete a file with no name"; note the inodes of . and the unprintable entry. — Jeff Schaller, Aug 25 '17 at 12:26

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 25 '17 at 09:52

3

You can delete the folder by inode.

First, find the inode number with ls -ial Antonin_Dvorak/.

Sample output:

$ ls -ial Antonin_Dvorak/
total 12
25306387 drwx------ 3 VUW\me VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 /
23592962 drwx------ 3 VUW\me VUW\domain users 4096 Jan 22  2015 ./
23592391 drwx------ 3 VUW\me VUW\domain users 4096 Aug 25 11:10 ../

You cannot pass an inode to rm directly, but there is a trick with find.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -inum 25306387 -delete

Do make sure you replace my sample inode (25306387) with the one on your system!

answered Aug 25 '17 at 09:52

marcv81

620

Excellent idea. Unfortunately in this case it turns out It's not just a nameless random folder. It's a nameless hard link to the folder itself! What on earth?? – Anaphory Aug 25 '17 at 10:08
I do not know the answer, but this makes the question significantly more interesting! I suggest you edit the title, or maybe even ask a different question: some of the details are no longer relevant to what the issue turns out to be. – marcv81 Aug 25 '17 at 10:38

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 25 '17 at 10:51

0

Try using unlink. Since its a hard link you will need to unlink it then rm -r will work.

answered Aug 25 '17 at 10:51

enZyme

364

Delete folder with empty (?) file name

2 Answers2