On Mon, Apr 30, 2001 at 11:55:03AM -0700, Greywolf wrote:

> Anecdote:
> 
>  Recently had the ... um ... "privilege" of running AOSOS automounter.
>  It decided to wedge, so I killed it and started unmounting
>  things manually. I decided to rmdir all the empty directories,
>  and when it hit a particular user's home directory, it refused
>  to rmdir. The error it returned? "No such file or directory."
>  # cd aforementioned_dir 
>  # cd .. # rmdir aforementioned_dir
>  aforementioned_dir: No such file or directory. 
>  # rm -fr aforementioned_dir 
>  [pause. Hit ^C in a panic after realising what's happening.]

You got a not found error on a directory, were able to cd to it, and yet
you issued a recursive delete on that directory?

You can't screw up like that and blame the OS... ;)

None of my systems (NetBSD 1.5, FreeBSD 4.3, Debian Linux 2.2r) behave
like your system.

>  Now, pardon me, but if you do a rmdir, shouldn't you get ENOTEMPTY
>  or (in case it's a mount point) EBUSY (assuming it's empty), and not
>  ENOENT? Principle of least surprise? Anyone?

What system are you running? I assume it's Linux, but then I can't get
that behavior on a Linux machine myself so I have to ask.

The only thing I can think of is that you have a version of libc that
has problems.

> I still haven't fully recovered my home directory,

What, no backups?  

> 	and AOSOS amd does random hangs when I update the amd.home maps. Feh.

Userland or kernel level?

The former should never hang your machine except in certain cases (and
it effects even NetBSD) and the kernel level stuff (only in Linux I
think) is marked experimental.

-- 
shannon @ wido maker .com  _________________________________________________
______________________/ armchairrocketscientistgraffitiexenstentialist
 "And in billows of might swell the Saxons before her,-- Unite, oh
 unite!  Or the billows burst o'er her!" -- Downfall of the Gael