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From: Paul DuBois <dubois@primate.wisc.edu>
Message-Id: <199608310434.XAA01509@night.primate.wisc.edu>
Subject: Re: Unremovable directories
To: metcalf@imagine.com (Jeffrey M. Metcalf)
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 23:34:07 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <3227B030.41C67EA6@imagine.com> from "Jeffrey M. Metcalf" at Aug 30, 96 11:23:28 pm
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>I was recently doing some system maintenance when I accidentally
>corrupted a directory entry.
>Apparently some of the symbolic links I was making caused the
>corruption.  Now when I perform 
>the following:
>
>rm -rf unremovable/
>
>I get
>
>rm: unremovable/: Directory not empty
>
>The directory is owned by root and I am performing the rm command as
>root.
>
>Clearly the directory is empty (rm -rf emptied it).  Is there some way
>to remove this entry 
>by referring specifically to its inode?  I hope not to have to rebuild
>the filesystem.
>
>The directory entry is not entirely corrupt in the sense that I can copy
>files into it
>and remove files from it and I can move it around.
>
>It seems to be linked to another directory in some way.  That directory
>is also unremovable.

This may not solve your problem, but some versions of rm will not
remove a directory if you specify a trailing slash on the end of the
name.  Try "rm -rf unremovable" instead.