Deleting a broken file

RatedR · 11-14-2012, 05:12 AM

Hopefully this is a simple one, was finding it difficult to search for a solution though.

How can I delete the broken file named "config"?

Code:

$ ls -l
ls: cannot access config: No such file or directory
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar  2  2010 applications.d
?????????? ? ?    ?       ?            ? config

I want to replace the file with a valid one in order to start some software, but because it has no attributes or ownership I can't seem to do anything with it. Help!

unSpawn · 11-14-2012, 06:50 AM

You're looking at the symptom of something else. Fix whatever causes file system corruption first. Before you go off and runs fsck on the umounted partition maybe tell us first what happened that caused this if you have any idea.

jefro · 11-14-2012, 02:49 PM

That is a good point. Sometimes file systems do get bad for unknown reasons (actually reason's hard to discover).

I might be tempted to boot to a live cd of the same version if possible and check the filesystem or just delete that entry if possible. It can cause other issues so consider a backup now.