Re: Problems with RM on NSLU2

[Jim Meyering]

Michael McTails <address@hidden> wrote:
> I built coreutils with a native GCC compiler on the NSLU2 which is an
> armv5b device. I keep getting circular directory structure even though
> the filesystem is fine. Here the error messages exactly, and any info
> I think is useful:
>
> DATABANK:/opt/src root# ls
> bash-3.0  coreutil.tar  coreutils-5.2.1  test
> DATABANK:/opt/src root# rm -r test/
> rm: WARNING: Circular directory structure.
> This almost certainly means that you have a corrupted file system.
> NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER.
> The following directory is part of the cycle:
>    `test//../../../../../../../..'

Thanks for the report.

Be careful.  Could this be due to a compiler bug?

GNU rm should never traverse `..' links, but the directory
name in the diagnostic above makes it look like rm did exactly
that, several times.  If that is the case, then the code to
detect whether a file is named `..' or `.' is being miscompiled.
Look at the function named readdir_ignoring_dot_and_dotdot.