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Date:   Thu, 27 Jan 2022 13:40:44 +0000
From:   Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
To:     Ritesh Harjani <riteshh@linux.ibm.com>
Cc:     Maxim Blinov <maxim.blinov@embecosm.com>,
        linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Help! How to delete an 8094-byte PATH?
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References: <d4a67b38-3026-59be-06a8-3a9a5f908eb4@embecosm.com>
 <20220127122039.45kxmnm3s7kflo6h@riteshh-domain>
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On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 05:50:39PM +0530, Ritesh Harjani wrote:
> On 22/01/27 07:06AM, Maxim Blinov wrote:
> > $ for i in $(seq 999999); do echo "im $i levels deep"; cd confdir3; done;
> >
> > It then ran for a while, and eventually I got to the bottom:
> >
> > ```
> > ...
> > im 892 levels deep
> > im 893 levels deep
> > im 894 levels deep
> > im 895 levels deep
> > im 896 levels deep
> > bash: cd: confdir3: File name too long
> > $ ls
> > <nothing here>
> > ```
> >
> > So then, I `cd ../`, and `rmdir confdir3`, but even here, I get
> >
> > rmdir: failed to remove 'confdir3/': File name too long
> >
> > I would be very grateful if someone could please help suggest how I
> > might get this infernal tower of directories off of my precious ext4
> > partition.
> >
> > I was thinking maybe there's some kind of magic "forget this directory
> > inode ever existed" command, but I am out of my depth with filesystems.

here's an idea:

while true; do
	mv confdir3/confdir3 tmpd; rmdir confdir3; mv tmpd confdir3;
done