From: lhall AT rfk DOT com (Larry Hall) Subject: Re: rm -rf -> Circular directory structure 6 Aug 1997 09:17:45 -0700 Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <2.2.32.19970806133414.0097c55c.cygnus.gnu-win32@ma.ultranet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: lhall AT ma DOT ultranet DOT com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Original-To: Christoph Kukulies , gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com At 11:19 AM 8/6/97 +0200, Christoph Kukulies wrote: >I'm having a weird problem under NT 4.0 (I remember to >have seen this with b17 and NT3.51 also): > >D:\>rm -rf somedir >rm: WARNING: Circular directory structure. >This almost certainly means that you have a corrupted file system. >NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER. >Cycle detected: >somedir/FOO/FOO >is the same file as >somedir > >CHKDSK doesn't flag any errors on the filesystem and I tend to believe >this isn't the cause anyway. > >The interesting thing is: When I remove the file somedir/FOO/FOO >the rm command is able to run through without errors. > > >-- >Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku AT gil DOT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de Chris, This should be in the FAQ (I expect its not at the moment). The problem is caused by a faulty inode mapping algorithm in all the betas. There is no problem with your file system. It merely means that the faulty inode mapping for files and directories thinks there's more than 1 file and/or directory for the generated inode number, which is certainly a bad thing for traditional UNIX file systems. The error hinders rm from working correctly but does not indicate file system problems. You'll just need to delete the intended files/directories another way (most likely via Windows or DOS tools). I believe Sergey's latest DLL has some fixes to mitigate this problem. I don't think there's a complete fix yet (correct me if I'm wrong folks). Larry Hall lhall AT rfk DOT com RFK Partners, Inc. (617) 239-1053 8 Grove Street (617) 239-1655 - FAX Wellesley, MA 02181 - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".