Re: [opensuse] deleting

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 11:53:48 -0500
dwain <dwain.alford@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jerry Feldman wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:53:14 -0500
dwain <dwain.alford@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jerry Feldman wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 03:12:06 -0500
dwain <dwain.alford@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

what is the command line command to delete a file, directory etc.?
The previous posts mentioned both rm (remove a file, but this can also
remove a directory tree). rmdir removes an empty directory.

One difference between Unix/Linux systems and other operating systems is
that a file is an entry in a table, called inode. A file may have many
different names (hard and symbolic links). For instance, a directory
will have a minimum or 2 names, the name you see from its parent
directory, and the dot ( . ). Whenever a new hard link is created, it
increments the use count in the inode table. The rm command removes the
file name and decrements the use count, but does not necessarily delete
the file. The system deletes the file, only when the use count reaches
zero. Also, when a program opens a file, the use count is incremented.
One of the things that can happen is that log files are generally
opened by daemons. If you try to delete a large log file, rm will
remove the file name, but the file remains open until either the daemon
closes it or the daemon exits.

thank you for the additional information. although it is completely
over my head in comprehension, i hope to understand it one day. it was
recommended to do an rm --help. i did that, and was told to do -r or
-R after the rm and before the file or directory i was to remove.

i noticed in konquer that after the deletion the directory was still
there, but it was empty. there was a nested directory inside of the one
i deleted. after a reboot, the directory was gone.

is this what you meant about the daemon keeping the directory open until
the daemon closes it or exits?
rm -r is a recursive delete. Be very careful.
There are many reasons a directory is not removed.
rm -rf <directory name>
This will remove the directory and everything in it. (-f is force).
rmdir removes an empty directory.
One reason a directory may not be removed is that you could be in it.
For instance, 'rm -rf . ' will not delete the current directory
because that is your current working directory.

i understand that. the reason i had deleted the directory was that
during the installation of jre 1.5.0 (according to the install
instructions on the site) it was mentioned to install in the
usr/local/java directory.

well, not know and muddling along i created the java directory in the
wrong place. when i did install the rpm it was put where it was
supposed to be, i guess. that meant that i had an rpm file sitting in a
directory in the wrong place that needed to be gotten rid of.

that's why i deleted the directory; and i do appreciate everyone's
remarks on how dangerous that can be. i understand that as well. since
i am in the process of setting up my new and first linux system, a fresh
install of the os means nothing, since i have nothing of great
importance on the drive anyway.

i'm learning and having fun with my new toy, the command line interface.

please recommend some reading material that will help me better
understand and use linux more efficiently. i'm an old man and i don't
have much time left on this earth and i want to make the best of what i
have left.

if your interested, here's my personal web site, if you enjoy art.

http://www.studiokdd.com/
Here is a URL:
http://www.linuxcommand.org/learning_the_shell.php

Basically, there are 2 flavors of shell (command line interpreters) in
Unix and Linux. /bin/sh is the Bourne Shell. The Linux BASH shell is a
derivation of sh as is the Korn Shell. The other flavor is the C shell
developed by Bill Joy and his team at Berkeley. This includes csh and
tcsh. Which one you use is religious. You can actually write some
fairly complex script with either shell.
When I was preparing to teach a Linux course at a local university I
did a quick count and Linux has over 1500 different commands. But,
remember, that Unix commands are generally designed as tools in a kit.
You can chain a number of them together on a command line using the
pipe ( | ):
ls -l | grep "\.doc" | pr -f

In the above, I'm doing a long listing (see man ls) in a directory,
filtering for and file that contains .doc - note that grep is a regular
expression parser so the . must be escaped, and filtering though pr
with the -f flag to paginate it nicely.
--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@xxxxxxx>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why newbies dont RTFM...
    ... Even though I've used Linux before, I've never had to do any ... > BASH BUILTIN COMMANDS ... > last command exited within ... > unless the shell is not exeâ ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Why newbies dont RTFM...
    ... Even though I've used Linux before, I've never had to do any ... BASH BUILTIN COMMANDS ... last command exited within ... unless the shell is not exeâ ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • Re: OS/2 subsystem in Windows NT
    ... Only Windows has a similar shell ... I started using bash when I first encountered SLS Linux in the fall of ... The unix command line is unequalled in many ways, ... 4OS2 is the OS/2 native version of the 4DOS replacement command shell ...
    (comp.os.os2.advocacy)
  • Re: Is SuSe ready for me yet?
    ... Play music and video ... Install additional software for something outside this list. ... be installed far less problematically than in Linux. ... Sounds like a command line to me, only put in a pretty little window ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: free up some disk space
    ... > allocated to linux on my disk. ... This will tell us how much disk space is used up on each ... Another command to post the result of is the du command: ... "mere" 3.2 GB system but it wasn't an "everything" install. ...
    (Fedora)
Loading