The following has me
both worried and stumped--any suggestions very welcome.
----------
A perl script using
the MakeDir command was asked to create \\System\HomeDir\<userID> for a batch of new
users in a textfile, where 'Home' holds all our user folders. In the
input textfile, 'homedir' was spelled all-lower-case, as it has been for
the past four semesters (without incident). In the filesystem, 'HomeDir'
is capitalized.
There were 17 names
in the file. Users 1-13 and 15-17 had their folders created, shared, and
permitted just fine. User 14 had his folder created under \\System\homedir\, a new folder which was created just
for him. There's nothing odd I can see about user 14--his userID isn't a
reserved word, the formatting in the input file is correct, and so
on.
It was easy to move
user14 from \homedir to \HomeDir, but I can't figure out how to delete the spare
\homedir folder. Both the GUI and the command line refuse to move, rename,
or delete it. (BTW, the GUI shows the bad folder as 'homedir'
initially, then after a few minutes it refreshes to showing two identical copies
of HomeDir.) The HomeDir folder has several hundred user subfolders, and
is in 24x7 use.
It seems pretty
obvious what happened--the filesystem decided to be case-sensitive for the wrong
split-second. It's less obvious how it happened, or what to do about
it. I figure chkdsk will probably fix it, but I don't want to reboot
unless it's essential. I'd just let the odd folder be, but I'm worried
about the potential for filesystem instability. So, questions for the
gurus:
1) will chkdsk fix
this?
2) will chkdsk fix
it by deleting the (old) folder, along with the 600+ user shares, or will
it delete the empty (new) folder, or both, or will I be taking
potluck?
3) Is there some way
to fix this without rebooting, or moving the contents of the \HomeDir
folder? If not, is there any risk to waiting to run chkdsk until the next
time we have occasion to reboot?
4) What's a good perl idiom for checking the case of
a foldername against existing
folder names? It doesn't need to be
super-fast, but it does need to catch and fix
these kinds of typos--and be clear enough that my successor will understand it
at a glance.
5) [Extra Credit :-] Just how did perl
manage to do this, anyway--anyone know?
Many TIA,
--Chris
=========================
Christopher J.
Mackie
Politics Department
Computing Support
Princeton
University
