Strange files

Strange files

[gerardo juarez-mondragon]

Hi,

A couple of files are present in /. These is what ls -l tells me:

?r--rw--wt  13873  2573    11826   4294967295  Apr 19 1998 lost+found
?---r-xrwT  12846 14387    14387   4294967295  Aug 15 1995 root

This is what 'file' tells me:

/root: sticky file: invalid mode  031056
/lost+found: sticky  file: invalid mode 071463

I am installing it, so it's not connected to the network or anything.
Does anyone have an idea where these files came from, why can't I 
erase them ("Operation not permitted") and why so early (disks are 
brand new)?

Thank you
Gerardo


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Re: Strange files

[Stephen Samuel]

They SHOULD be directories... and you really don't want to
delete them (other than to recreate them properly).

lost+found is where fsck wil put files that haven't been
deleted, but don't have a directory pointing to them.
(normally a sign of noticable disk corruption after a
system crash).

There should be a lost+found directory in the root directory
of each (disk-based) filesystem you have mounted on your box.

/root is (on many systems) where the root (superuser) user's
home directory usually is. Once again -- it's generally
considered bad karma to remove the root user's home directory)

the 031XXX
would (according to Linux bits) say that it's both a character
device and a fifo(named pipe). with the sticky bit set.
a 7 instead of the 3 would mean that it's also a directory (!).

either the perm bits are very different for your OS, or it
managed to do something VERY strange with those two directories.



gerardo juarez-mondragon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> A couple of files are present in /. These is what ls -l tells me:
> 
> ?r--rw--wt  13873  2573    11826   4294967295  Apr 19 1998 lost+found
> ?---r-xrwT  12846 14387    14387   4294967295  Aug 15 1995 root
> 
> This is what 'file' tells me:
> 
> /root: sticky file: invalid mode  031056
> /lost+found: sticky  file: invalid mode 071463
> 
> I am installing it, so it's not connected to the network or anything.
> Does anyone have an idea where these files came from, why can't I 
> erase them ("Operation not permitted") and why so early (disks are 
> brand new)?

-- 
Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                samuel@bcgreen.com
		   http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
Powerful committed communication, reaching through fear, uncertainty and
doubt to touch the jewel within each person and bring it to life.

Re: Strange files

[Glynn Clements]

gerardo juarez-mondragon wrote:

> A couple of files are present in /. These is what ls -l tells me:
> 
> ?r--rw--wt  13873  2573    11826   4294967295  Apr 19 1998 lost+found
> ?---r-xrwT  12846 14387    14387   4294967295  Aug 15 1995 root

Filesystem corruption. You need to boot up in single-user mode and run
fsck on the disk.

> This is what 'file' tells me:
> 
> /root: sticky file: invalid mode  031056
> /lost+found: sticky  file: invalid mode 071463
> 
> I am installing it, so it's not connected to the network or anything.
> Does anyone have an idea where these files came from, why can't I 
> erase them ("Operation not permitted") and why so early (disks are 
> brand new)?

If the kernel didn't log any warnings, it's unlikely to be a simple
disk fault.

In the absence of any obvious reason why a filesystem might get
corrupted, most of the time it seems to come down to incorrect use of
the disk controller, either a bug in the driver, misconfiguration of
the driver, or some hardware quirk which the driver hasn't allowed
for.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@virgin.net>