Re: Weird directories on Windows share when using rm to delete a directory

[Eric Blake <eblake at redhat dot com>]

On 07/01/2010 03:24 PM, Slide wrote:
> I am seeing a VERY odd problem. If I run "/usr/bin/rm -rf
> //computer/share/path/to/dir" to remove a directory on a network
> share. I get some directories created with names like
> .XXXfffff8a0015e3b00c65f07a9f20c7a31 at the ROOT of the share (where
> XXX is unprintable character with the value 0x3f). I ran the command
> with strace, but didn't see anything in there that would point to why
> the directory is created.
> 
> If I run the corresponding Windows command "rmdir /s /q
> \\computer\share\path\to\dir" I do NOT see the same thing occur, so
> something in Cygwin is causing this issue. I am running Cygwin 1.7
> updated today.

This is due to cygwin emulating the ability to delete a file that is
still open.  Since windows doesn't directly allow it, cygwin instead
renames it out of the way, and relies on windows delete-on-close
semantics to get rid of that temporary name after everything finally
lets go of the file.  But if the delete-on-close stuff isn't working for
your particular network share, we'd need a few more details about your
share to allow us to work around the issue (probably by refusing to
attempt deleting an open file, if your share doesn't have any better
semantics available).

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake@redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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