[svlug] Totally pooched file permissions

[Alan Denney]

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:20:57 -0800, DzM <svlug at dzm.com> wrote:

>Hey gang -
>
>I have two files in a build directory that have gone ... well ... 
>insane. So much so that I can't even fix 'em:
>
>?rws-wSr-- 3540 232000980 232000980 232000980 May  8  1977 xforms
>
>I can't even find a reference that tells me what the "?" in the 
>permissions means. And the permissions are badly enough screwed that I 
>can't even just remove the file, even as root.. And I can't chmod it to 
>something more reasonable.
>
>Anyone have any clever advice about how to just delete the files so I 
>can check out fresh ones? These things don't work:
>
>[root at faux2 extensions]# id
>uid=0(root) gid=0(root) 
>groups=0(root),1(bin),2(daemon),3(sys),4(adm),6(disk),10(wheel)
>
>[root at faux2 extensions]# rm -rf xforms
>rm: cannot remove `xforms': Operation not permitted
>
>[root at faux2 extensions]# mv xforms /dev/null
>mv: overwrite `/dev/null'? y
>mv: `xforms' has unknown file type
>
>[root at faux2 extensions]# file xforms
>xforms: ERROR: invalid mode 06724
>
>[root at faux2 extensions]# ls -i
>444924 webdav  444926 xforms
>[root at faux2 extensions]# find . -inum 444926 -delete
>find: cannot delete ./xforms: Operation not permitted
>
>[root at faux2 extensions]# mv xforms /tmp/
>mv: `xforms' has unknown file type


Did you look for special characters in the filename?  That could be hosing the 
display content from "ls" and such.  Did you try ls -al with stdout and stderr routed
to a file, and then check the file with od to see what really comes out?

To isolate the file from the command line, turn off wildcards in your shell if you have to.