[ALUG] Removing unwanted files

[Richard Lewis]

On Sunday 04 February 2007 20:12, Barry Chater wrote:
>
> barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$ sudo rm pavcl_linux.tgz
> Password:
> rm: cannot remove `pavcl_linux.tgz': No such file or directory
> barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$
>
> and this is the file i am trying to remove
>
> barry/pavcl_linux.tgz
>
Have you managed to do this yet? I notice you've had some secret 
correspondence with Jenny - perhaps she fixed your problem. Also, I guess 
Keith was probably right.

The problem is most likely that rm doesn't know which file you are referring 
to as your command is not specific enough - you haven't told it exactly where 
the file is.

Sorry if you know all this, but lets take a look at your command prompt:

barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$

it is of the forms

{user name} @ {compter name} : {present working directory} $

in this case, the present working directory is "~" which is shorthand for the 
current user's home directory, in your case, probably "/home/barry2006".

(You can also check your present working directory with the pwd command.)

When you give a filename argument to a program, it either expects that file to 
be in the present working, a relative path from the present working directory 
or it expects it to be an absolute path, i.e. the complete path from the 
initial "/" through all the parent directories up to the file itself. 

So, for example, say your home directory contains a directory 
called "Documents" which, in turn, contains a file called "letter.txt", and 
your prompt is like this:

barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$

(i.e., your present working directory is your home directory), you can refer 
to the letter.txt file like this:

barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$ head Documents/letter.txt

this is a relative path, from the present working directory (/home/barry2006) 
to the Documents directory (/home/barry2006/Documents)

You can also refer to it like this:

barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$ head /home/barry2006/Documents/letter.txt

this is an absolute path.

Now, the problem you are having is that the file you want to refer to is in 
different directory to your present working directory, it is in the root 
directory (/). There are two options: either give rm an absolute path to the 
file:

barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$ sudo rm /pavcl_linux.tgz

or change the present working directory to the root directory and then give rm 
the plain filename:

barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$ cd /
barry2006 at barry2006-laptop:~$ sudo rm pavcl_linux.tgz

Hope thats clear?

Cheers,
Richard
-- 
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Richard Lewis
Sonic Arts Research Archive
http://www.sara.uea.ac.uk/
JID: ironchicken at jabber.earth.li
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