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X-Authentication-Warning:	slinky.cs.nyu.edu: pechtcha owned process doing -bs
Date:	Wed, 22 Jan 2003 11:44:13 -0500 (EST)
From:	Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To:	Gael Mulat <Gael DOT Mulat AT polyspace DOT com>
cc:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject:	Re: Bug in rm -r with locked files
In-Reply-To:	<3E2E5EEA.3000606@polyspace.com>
Message-ID:	<Pine.GSO.4.44.0301221139220.23429-100000@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
Importance:	Normal
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Gael Mulat wrote:

>
>
> Gael Mulat wrote:
>
> >    Hi,
> >
> >    This is a bug report about rm (package fileutils, version 4.1-1) on W2K.
> >
> >    Test case: take 2 cygwin shells.
> > shell 1:
> >    mkdir /tmp/directory
> >    vi /tmp/directory/file
> >
> > shell 2:
> >    /bin/rm -rf /tmp/directory
> >
> >    The shell2 doesn't manage to remove the directory and goes into an
> > infinite loop, taking 100% of the CPU.
> >    All is then OK if we go out of vi in the shell1.
> >
> >    Doing the same thing (deleting the directory) directly in Windows
> > produces an error message: "cannot delete directory: Access is denied.
> > The source file may be in use" and we can notice in the directory a
> > file named .file.swp that is also visible under Cygwin with ls -la.
> >
> >    The example I have just given uses vi, but it is the same with all
> > processes that open the file, as W2K puts a lock on it.
> >
> > Gael Mulat
> >
>     OK. If I summurize all that has been said, this problem is
> well-known but has no solution in a near future.
>
>     But a workaround would be very useful for people (me and Brian
> Kelly, for instance) who use plenty of rm -rf in cross-platform shell
> scripts.
>
>     Thanks to Shankar Unni, I have mine: I didn't noticed that only rm
> -rf had the trouble, and not rm -r.
>
>     So my workaround will be to replace all the '/bin/rm -rf dir' by
> 'chmod -R +w dir; /bin/rm -r dir'. The semantic is not exactly the same
> (especially on write-protected directories), but that will allow my
> scripts to work well...
>
>     Thanks everybody.
> Gael.

A suggestion:

'/bin/find dir -depth -exec /bin/chmod +w {} \; -exec /bin/rm -r {} \;'
might work, and will only parse the tree once...  It will invoke chmod and
rm multiple times, though, but that's a tradeoff.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big* RAMdisk!
  -- /usr/games/fortune


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