Re: rm -r sometimes produces errors under NFS

[Jim Meyering]

Vincent Lefevre <address@hidden> wrote:
> I've attached the log. Here are the contents of the archive:

Your log shows that rm succeeds in removing each file (all unlink syscalls
succeed), yet the directory is not empty, so it rewinds it and goes
through again -- and all names are still there.  The _second_ unlink
attempt fails with ENOENT, because now NFS is reporting that it's gone:

  access("test/config.h.in", W_OK)        = 0
  unlink("/proc/self/fd/4/config.h.in")   = 0
  ...
  access("test/config.h.in", W_OK)        = -1 ESTALE (Stale NFS file handle)
  unlink("/proc/self/fd/4/config.h.in")   = -1 ENOENT (No such file or 
directory)

But the solution for ignoring diagnostics about nonexistent
files is simply to use rm's -f option.

> courge:~> strace -o test.log rm -r test
> rm: cannot remove `test/config.h.in': No such file or directory

Does using -f solve your problem?