Hi all, I'm not a subscriber to this list (so please put me in the CC), but I've hit a really annoying un-googleable issue that I don't know who to ask about. A runaway script has been recursively creating sub-directories under sub-directories until it hit the (apparent) OS limit. The path in question goes something like this: /work/build-native/binutils-gdb/gnulib/confdir3/confdir3/confdir3/confdir3/confdir3/........ (you get the idea) It was only stopped by the following error: mkdir: cannot create directory 'confdir3': File name too long OK, fine, that was silly but whatever, right? I tried to delete this huge directory from the top with rm -rf confdir3/ but that simply generated the same error as above. So, I figured "Hey, I'll just walk all the way to the bottom, and delete the directories one-by-one bottom up". Here's the script I ran to get to the bottom: $ for i in $(seq 999999); do echo "im $i levels deep"; cd confdir3; done; It then ran for a while, and eventually I got to the bottom: ``` ... im 892 levels deep im 893 levels deep im 894 levels deep im 895 levels deep im 896 levels deep bash: cd: confdir3: File name too long $ ls <nothing here> ``` So then, I `cd ../`, and `rmdir confdir3`, but even here, I get rmdir: failed to remove 'confdir3/': File name too long I would be very grateful if someone could please help suggest how I might get this infernal tower of directories off of my precious ext4 partition. I was thinking maybe there's some kind of magic "forget this directory inode ever existed" command, but I am out of my depth with filesystems. Best Regards, Maxim Blinov
