During a routine trawl through the ext3 files, I found some astronomical file sizes, billions and billions of GB. They also has strange user and group names. I can not delete these "weird files" (the term used by the operating system utilities).
Here are a few examples. The original files were created on Windoze 98 version 2 circa 2001.
2411957 p--x---rwx 65487 299196551 2101198676 775118685 Apr 5 1943 00002434.thm 2411959 ?--xr-srwT 6581 42211 24637 1333254828 Jan 30 2029 00002435 2411960 -rwxr-xr-x 44608 305922048 3679253821 14580319157523353423 Dec 1 1949 00002437
lsattr: Operation not supported While reading flags on .....
stat ....... A "normal" file looks this this example:
File: `00002436' Size: 47537 Blocks: 96 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 2411956 Links: 1 Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root) Access: 2014-09-13 17:36:21.000000000 +0100 Modify: 2001-02-21 00:52:50.000000000 +0000 Change: 2013-03-12 06:26:36.000000000 +0000
The problem files look like this:
File: `00002434.thm' Size: 775118685 Blocks: 3429617551 IO Block: 4096 fifo Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 2411957 Links: 65487 Access: (0107/p--x---rwx) Uid: (299196551/ UNKNOWN) Gid: (2101198676/ UNKNOWN) Access: 1951-12-14 00:29:38.000000000 +0000 Modify: 1943-04-05 10:37:22.000000000 +0200 Change: 2011-08-13 06:50:44.000000000 +0100
File: `00002435' Size: 1333254828 Blocks: 1402834881 IO Block: 4096 weird file Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 2411959 Links: 6581 Access: (3156/?--xr-srwT) Uid: (42211/ UNKNOWN) Gid: (24637/ UNKNOWN) Access: 1926-11-04 02:28:28.000000000 +0000 Modify: 2029-01-30 15:25:30.000000000 +0000 Change: 1928-09-14 11:19:14.000000000 +0100
File: `00002437' Size: 14580319157523353423 Blocks: 1664918158 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: fd00h/64768d Inode: 2411960 Links: 44608 Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: (305922048/ UNKNOWN) Gid: (3679253821/ UNKNOWN) Access: 2014-09-13 17:36:28.000000000 +0100 Modify: 1949-12-01 22:31:41.000000000 +0000 Change: 2030-03-17 01:15:08.000000000 +0000
rm: cannot remove `00002437': Operation not permitted
However using 'lsattr 00002437' to expose the flags, then removing the flags with 'chattr -{flag) 00002437' eventually permitted me to delete the file with 'rm 00002437'.
The remaining two files appear un-touchable.
lsattr 00002435 lsattr: Operation not supported While reading flags on 00002435
chattr -a 00002434.thm ('a' was a random choice) chattr: Operation not supported while reading flags on 00002434.thm
find . -inum 2411959 -exec rm -i {} ; rm: remove weird file `./00002435'? y rm: cannot remove `./00002435': Operation not permitted
All advice, except to transfer everything to a new partition then reformat the bad partition (which I will do eventually), appreciated.