I made a mistake in my code and a funky home directory appear in my project repo directory. It seems that the ~ folder under my repo is not a symbolic link, so I don't feel safe to do rm ~/myrepo/~.
Note: when I do cd ~/my_repo/~, pwd gives me /home/alex, which is my home directory.
Is there a way to remove it safely?
Quote or escape the ~ that you want to use literally.
cd ~/my_repo/\~
rm -rf ~/my_repo/'~'
I'm using Ubuntu linux. I have a file #test.cpp#~ and when I try to run the following command in the terminal:
rm #test.cpp#~
all I get is:
rm: missing operand
Can someone tell me what's happening? I think the file is an autosave but I don't know how to delete it.
~ and # have special meaning in shell environment. User quotes:
rm "#test.cpp#~"
you need to escape the # try the following:
rm \#test.cpp\#~
you may need to do
rm \#test.cpp\#\~
I want to remove xyz_DB.lock.db file. I tried as root but couldn't delete it. How to remove it in terminal. My initial requirement was remove a folder. but it includes this locked file. And is there anyway to delete folder directly which include a locked file ?
Check with lsattr command if the immutable bit is set for the file, it will show (i)
# lsattr file
----i--------e- file
If so, change it using following command:
# chattr -i file
And then try to remove it.
Try either changing the files permissions through the GUI or use rm -rf on the directory that contains it.
try "chown" to provide permission to your file/folder and then delete it,
e.g: assume username= amol and filename=myfile.txt,,
For File:--- sudo chown amol:amol myfile.txt
For Folder:-- sudo chown -R amol:amol directory_name
I want to write simple script to copy/backup directory then remove on server startup. So something like this:
TC_DIR=${SERVER_HOME}/terracotta
CLUSTER_STAT_DIR=${TC_DIR}/cluster-stat
cp ${CLUSTER_STAT_DIR} ${TC_DIR}/old.cluster-stat
rm ${CLUSTER_STAT_DIR}
Thanks for help guys.
I believe what you have done should work with the only addition that you need to pass -r options to both cp and rm as you are dealing with directories. Try this:
TC_DIR=${SERVER_HOME}/terracotta
CLUSTER_STAT_DIR=${TC_DIR}/cluster-stat
cp -r ${CLUSTER_STAT_DIR} ${TC_DIR}/old.cluster-stat
rm -rf ${CLUSTER_STAT_DIR}
EDIT: if your question is how to execute that on startup take a look here.
I have a symlink to an important directory. I want to get rid of that symlink, while keeping the directory behind it.
I tried rm and get back rm: cannot remove 'foo'.
I tried rmdir and got back rmdir: failed to remove 'foo': Directory not empty
I then progressed through rm -f, rm -rf and sudo rm -rf
Then I went to find my back-ups.
Is there a way to get rid of the symlink with out throwing away the baby with the bathwater?
# this works:
rm foo
# versus this, which doesn't:
rm foo/
Basically, you need to tell it to delete a file, not delete a directory. I believe the difference between rm and rmdir exists because of differences in the way the C library treats each.
At any rate, the first should work, while the second should complain about foo being a directory.
If it doesn't work as above, then check your permissions. You need write permission to the containing directory to remove files.
use the "unlink" command and make sure not to have the / at the end
$ unlink mySymLink
unlink() deletes a name from the file system. If that name was the last link to a file and no processes have the file open the file is deleted and the space it was using is made available for reuse.
If the name was the last link to a file but any processes still have the file open the file will remain in existence until the last file descriptor referring to it is closed.
I think this may be problematic if I'm reading it correctly.
If the name referred to a symbolic link the link is removed.
If the name referred to a socket, fifo or device the name for it is removed but processes which have the object open may continue to use it.
https://linux.die.net/man/2/unlink
rm should remove the symbolic link.
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$ mkdir bar
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$ ln -s bar foo
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$ ls -l foo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 skrall skrall 3 2008-10-16 16:22 foo -> bar
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$ rm foo
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$ ls -l foo
ls: cannot access foo: No such file or directory
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$ ls -l bar
total 0
skrall#skrall-desktop:~$
Use rm symlinkname but do not include a forward slash at the end (do not use: rm symlinkname/). You will then be asked if you want to remove the symlink, y to answer yes.
Assuming it actually is a symlink,
$ rm -d symlink
It should figure it out, but since it can't we enable the latent code that was intended for another case that no longer exists but happens to do the right thing here.
If rm cannot remove a symlink, perhaps you need to look at the permissions on the directory that contains the symlink. To remove directory entries, you need write permission on the containing directory.
Assuming your setup is something like: ln -s /mnt/bar ~/foo, then you should be able to do a rm foo with no problem. If you can't, make sure you are the owner of the foo and have permission to write/execute the file. Removing foo will not touch bar, unless you do it recursively.
I also had the same problem. So I suggest to try unlink <absolute path>.
For example unlink ~/<USER>/<SOME OTHER DIRECTORY>/foo.
On CentOS, just run rm linkname and it will ask to "remove symbolic link?". Type Y and Enter, the link will be gone and the directory be safe.
I had this problem with MinGW (actually Git Bash) running on a Windows Server. None of the above suggestions seemed to work. In the end a made a copy of the directory in case then deleted the soft link in Windows Explorer then deleted the item in the Recycle Bin. It made noises like it was deleting the files but didn't. Do make a backup though!
you can use unlink in the folder where you have created your symlink
If rm cannot remove a link, perhaps you need to look at the permissions on the directory that contains the link. To remove directory entries, you need write permission on the containing directory.