Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com> writes: > Apparently, though unproven, at 12:28 on Monday 01 November 2010, Harry > Putnam > did opine thusly: > >> Something I have not run into before. >> >> Following a major update still in progress I find the ls command will >> not run on $HOME. >> >> I can view the directory with emacs in dired mode but `ls' simply will >> not complete... never shows anything and stays hung indefinitely. >> >> Top shows 94% idle so its not from heavy system usage. >> >> The ls command seems to work anywhere else, and I see nothing peculiar >> when viewing $HOME with emacs. >> >> Running `ls' from a root shell against my user $HOME, is the same story, >> indefinite hang, nothing listed. >> >> I've let it run from both user and root shell for upwards of 1/2 hr. >> Still just sets there. >> >> I've killed the terminal and restarted both user and root shells. But >> still the same result... a `ls' against my user $HOME will just hang. >> >> In both root shell and user shell, once `ls' is run against my user >> $HOME, the command hangs but also cannot by interrupted. Ctrl-c will >> not stop it. >> >> It only seem to happen on $HOME.... how very odd. >> Anyone else seen that or have an idea what might be the cause? > > By the time the command hits ls itself, the shell has already expanded the > HOME variable. So it's unlikely to be the command and more something dodgy > with your shell. > > What shell are you using? > What is the output of "echo $HOME"?
My shell is xterm... and was just updated to: Wed Oct 27 10:15:06 2010 >>> x11-terms/xterm-262 echo $HOME /home/reader That recent update may be the problem. I'll back that out later to see, but right now have a bigger and more urgent problem getting mail back in order following a major update.
