Subject: Re: HUGE filesystem PROBLEM (too big to be true)
From: [email-masked] (Benjamin Riefenstahl)

12 Feb 1998 10:55:11 -0800
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To: [email-masked]

Hi Nicola,

Nicola Bernardini wrote:
> On a particular directory tree which is a backup of a project
> I am working on (fairly happily, I must say) with the cygwin project,
> rm -rfv locks up and cannot be killed in anyway. 

Looks like a bug in rm. It should of course report an error for the file
and go ahead.

> I go into that directory
> and check: it contains a file called 'con.c'. It was put there via
> untarring a unix distribution.

Do you know exactly which tool you used for that? A file of that name
should of course not be created on a Windows system (see below).

> crw-r--r--   0 0        Everyone   0,   0 Jan  1  1970 con.c
> 
> which is to say that it sees it as a character device, the console!

That's right. For accessing DOS devices neither the path nor the
extension are relevant. Every file somestring\con.somestring is treated
the same as just CON . Nasty, ain't it :-(. It's a "feature" that WinNT
inherited from DOS.

> I spare you the details: I tried to remove and/or rename the file,
> the directory that contains it, the tree, etc. with rm -rf, with
> del on a dos console, with mv, with the explorer.

I tried here and I can not create a file by that name by any legal
means. I created a file con.gg from MacOS on a network volume, and I
could not remove the file from my WinNT station. gnuwin's ls only shows
it when I don't specify the "-l" option. "ls -l" presumably fails in
stat() and just ignores the file. I can of course remove the file from
the Mac that I created it with in the first place.

> But if the file is create untarring an archive, then it'll exist
> and it'll never ever go away... (In other words, it's something really
> easy to reproduce, if someone has the guts to do it)

I tried it (on the said network volume ;-) with a tar containing just
the file con.gg and tar hangs (I can kill it with ^C). I'm using the
original unchanged b18 (no coolview), WinNT4.SP3, Netware network
volume. I tested text=binary as well as text!=binary. Looks like
coolview is the main difference?

so long, benny
======================================
Benjamin Riefenstahl ([email-masked])
Crocodial Communications EntwicklungsGmbH
Ophagen 16a, D-20257 Hamburg, Germany
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