Bug 473472 - rm -d broken
Summary: rm -d broken
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
Classification: Red Hat
Component: coreutils
Version: 5.2
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
low
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Ondrej Vasik
QA Contact: BaseOS QE
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks: 473662
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2008-11-28 18:18 UTC by Jerry Uanino
Modified: 2009-09-02 09:17 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2009-09-02 09:17:17 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHBA-2009:1262 0 normal SHIPPED_LIVE coreutils bug fix update 2009-09-01 09:22:04 UTC

Description Jerry Uanino 2008-11-28 18:18:37 UTC
Description of problem:


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
coreutils-5.97-14.el5

How reproducible:
very

Steps to Reproduce:
1. mkdir /tmp/abc
2. rm -d /tmp/abc
3. output complains it's a directory but man page says rm -d should remove a directory.
  
Actual results:
rm: cannot remove `abc': Is a directory


Expected results:
dir should be removed. also tried as root, same problem.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Ondrej Vasik 2008-11-28 19:11:30 UTC
Thanks for report. Now the option -d is deprecated in upstream coreutils - with comment:
/* Ignore this option, for backward compatibility with
   coreutils 5.92.  FIXME: Some time after 2005, change this
   to report an error (or perhaps behave like FreeBSD does)
   instead of ignoring the option.  */

This option seems to be not working at all in RHEL-4/RHEL-5 coreutils, as it only activates boolean which is unused in the sourcecode. Activation boolean was removed from remove.c by http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commitdiff;h=fb205872c1038139e118022014db0d6d817c34ec
in June 2002, coreutils-5.2.1 (RHEL-4) are releasad in March 2004.

You should use -rf for removing non-empty directories, the best solution for that bugzilla would be to remove that confusing option from the help, man and info page as it is noop.

Comment 2 Jerry Uanino 2008-11-29 19:31:51 UTC
Since it's the first option in the man page, removing it from future versions would be a great help.  I am servicing end users from another operating system and they were using the man pages heavily so they didn't read past the first option for removing a directory to see rm -rf.  Thanks.

Comment 9 errata-xmlrpc 2009-09-02 09:17:17 UTC
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2009-1262.html


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