Re: rm -r sometimes produces errors under NFS

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2007-03-05 19:07:31 +0100, Jim Meyering wrote:
> 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.

But IMHO, rm should remember that is has already done an unlink and
there shouldn't be a diagnostic in this case.

> > 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?

Yes.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <address@hidden> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)