1
I am trying to remove a file using rm. However, if I do ls, all the information about the file is ?????? ?? ?? example.txt... And calling rm returns that no such file exists. How can I force a remove of the file?
pypmannetjies
Posted 2010-08-02T14:36:43.053
Reputation: 159
1
You can try:
rm -f example.txt
Or
touch example.txt && rm -f example.txt (update timestamp on the file first)
Or
chmod 777 example.txt && rm -f example.txt (set readable, writeable, executable then remove it).
As suggested above, fsck is a good idea as well.
Mistiry
Posted 2010-08-02T14:36:43.053
Reputation: 4 759
Someone care to explain why this answer is -1? – Mistiry – 2010-08-03T21:58:15.413
Don't know. I can see nothing wrong with it. I upvoted, but it should be at 1 now... – pypmannetjies – 2010-08-04T07:36:09.993
Did any of those fix your problem? Thanks for the upvote! – Mistiry – 2010-08-04T21:21:55.350
2
Depends on the filesystem used, but most of the time you need to check the filesystem with fsck (the variant of it, whatever your filesystem is).
Janne Pikkarainen
Posted 2010-08-02T14:36:43.053
Reputation: 6 717
1The questionmarks could also mean your file name contains characters your terminal can not display. Does ls -lha provide more information? – matthias krull – 2010-08-02T15:35:33.413