How is it possible for rm to throw "not a directory" and "is a directory errors"?

Question

I got a strange error the other day. Attempting to rm -rf nav/ a directory threw "not a directory", but trying to rm nav errored with "is a directory".

How is this possible?

_{(source: zastica.com)}

Well, what *is* it, then? What's "ls -l nav" show? – Rob F Oct 12 '09 at 16:23 — Rob F, Oct 12 '09 at 16:23

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 12 '09 at 16:24

1

You may have some filesystem corruption. Notice the 1 between the permission and the owner? That's the number of links to the directory inode. A directory should normally have a minimum of two, because it is linked to by the parent directory, and by itself (the . entry it contains). I would guess there is some corruption and your nav directory does not contain a . entry. Can you get anything with ls -la nav?

answered Oct 12 '09 at 16:24

James Sneeringer

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The file/directory is already gone unfortunately, so I can't ls -la nav. – davethegr8 Oct 12 '09 at 17:04

How is it possible for rm to throw "not a directory" and "is a directory errors"?

1 Answers1