Ghost File - Cannot Delete

[ddpruitt]

I have a file that I cannot delete or change ownership of. I would like to be able to delete the file without having to resort to removing the partition.

When I do ls I see the file:

[smerf]

what fs it is? maybe file is marked immutable?

[ddpruitt]

I am useing reiserfs.

when I lsattr the file I get:

[smerf]

root has nearly God power.... but: kernel and modules running kernel mode have much more power
something crashes sometimes, and result in error message which sometimes may sound confusing.

it seems that you have broken filesystem (or even hardware problem), please:

1) try to access the file and check dmesg | tail output
2) unmount affected filesystem unmount [fs_mount_point] and run fsck on appropiate device (if it is your root fs remount it read-only instead of unmounting mount / -o remount,ro, if you get busy message determine processes blocking umount using fuser)
3) execute stat [directory_which_holds_problematic_file] and post the output
_________________
Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question, the answer is no.

[ddpruitt]

I ran the fsck with the --fix-fixable and it removed the problem file.

Thank You very Much!

I seem to have ran into the same problem with some other files now so I am wondering if it is a hardware problem.

I ran the stat on the new problem children and this is what I get:

[smerf]

What does dmesg say? If it is a hardware problem, kernel should cry about it. You can try using badblocks on suspected device (but, please BE EXTREMELY CAREFULL when using it on existing fs - read manual page before trying). Are you using some extra options (I'm not using reiserfs currently, just guessing) while mounting this partition?

badblocks is a part of e2fsprogs package, maybe there is some similar program designed for reiser, but the only thing we want to check is read/write consistecy, so probably this program will help - however, BE CAREFULL!
_________________
Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question, the answer is no.

[ddpruitt]

dmesg doesn't say anything about the drive.

I am mounting the device as /dev/hde1, the entire drive is formatted as reiserfs. I am using it as a backup drive following the instructions found at http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/index.html. It is a procedure to use rsync and cp -al as a rolling backup (just the home directory for now).

The procedure has a step that mounts the device mount -o remount, rw [dev]. Normally it is mounted ro. After various rm's and mv's and cp -al's are ran and the rsync finishes, the device is remounted ro.

Also, the it is mounted to is in the /root (/root/backup). This folder is mounted

[smerf]

seems to be something reiser-specific (and thus i'm not able to help you) or hardware-related. however I will keep thinking about your problem.
_________________
Microsoft is not the answer, Microsoft is the question, the answer is no.