This is the LAMER question of the day!! 2

[Cadwalader]

Hello I have a 6 gig directory of junk I just needed to hold temporarily, so I put it all on the RedHat box in /home/public/entertainment and now I can't get rid of it. I own it (r00t) and it is my user group (r00t again) I can use the files in it, and delete them one by one, but I can't delete the whole dir. I did the rmdir -d /home/public/entertainment and it told me that it wasn't empty, continue? Y {enter} then I get 'Couldn't remove directory because it was not empty. or something like that. I am on links in my box right now and it's a text only server. hehe I am a glutton fo rpunishment, I know. Ok, so I am definately doing something wrong, please help. All I want to do is get rid of that dir, it's taking up huge amounts of space. There is nothing important in it, it's all MP3's and avi's and stuff. I have already put them on a 2000Pro box so the files are where I need them now. I just need to know how to get rid of that thing!!! ARRGHHG!! Hope I was of some help...
--OR--
Thanks for the help...
--Rich

 

[dankelt]

rm -Rf /home/public/entertainment/

 

[mithrilhall]

I think it's something like:

rmdir -rf

or

rm -rf


The "-r" is for recursive. This will delete everything in that directory and it's sub-directories.

The "-f" is for "force". This way you're not prompted for each file.

I'm not sure on the syntax here but if I remember correctly it was something like that. ====================================
I love people. They taste just like
chicken!

http://mithrilhall.redirectme.net

 

[Cadwalader]

Dankelt, Mithrilhall,

Thank you very much for the speedy response. It worked. That huge boulder of a dir is gone. should I defrag that thing or something? It's been running for about a month now with out a defrag...I just had my hands on a book called "Linux Network Toolkit" and I was just turning to the page when I was called away from it. Darn!

Thanks for the help! ;-)
Hope I was of some help...
--OR--
Thanks for the help...
--Rich

 

[mithrilhall]

I didn't think that Linux needed or had defragmenting utilities? ====================================
I love people. They taste just like
chicken!

http://mithrilhall.redirectme.net

 

[d3funct]

You will probably never have a need to defrag a linux box. Linux does not depend so much on the fragementation (or lack thereof) of a filesystem. When a directory is deleted the inodes it was relying on are reclaimed by the system not just left sitting in an unavailable state. Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
-- Ambrose Bierce

 

[mithrilhall]

Thanks for the explanation d3funct. ====================================
I love people. They taste just like
chicken!

http://mithrilhall.redirectme.net

 

[wlwoman]

http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/

For future reference, a pretty comprehensive list of Linux commands with options explained in terms even I can understand!