Broken Windows Ⅱ presents:
The FTP Fiasco

 
by doggitydogs

Welcome to doggitydogs's article on the FTP Fiasco.
Introduction | Causes | Symptoms | Cures | Animated GIF | Links

Introduction

The FTP Fiasco is an odd series of errors generated when trying to delete FTP backups ?.
This can only be caused by Unix/Linux web servers. If you are hosting on a Windows server, you will not experience this problem.

Causes

Windows has the following restrictions:

Linux/Unix does not have these restrictions. Thus, a Linux/Unix directory tree might look like this:

while a Windows directory tree would look like this:

If you back up the contents of a Linux/Unix server/computer (usually an FTP server) onto a Windows computer, Windows ignores this rule, as the names must be legitimate if you have managed to store them elsewhere, right?

But when it comes time to delete them, things get really screwed up.

Symptoms

When you attempt to delete the public_html directory, you get this:

My first response to this was:

“So? I'm trying to delete it. What does that have to do with its contents?”

I opened the public_html directory, deleted one folder, and...it's gone!

I kept on deleting one directory at a time until I came to starkow.

When I attempted to delete starkow, it gave me the message again.

What the heck? I opened the starkow directory. All it contained was a directory, called  . That's right,  . " ".

When I tried to delete  , it said:

How is that possible? I just right clicked the file and clicked Delete! How can a file I just clicked on not exist?

Cures

My first instinct, and probably yours, too, was to use a boot CD. But if you do this, it will just go:

Now what?

I suggest using Cedrick Collomb's Unlocker, which can be downloaded for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista here.

After this is installed, just right-click the file and click Unlocker. When the dialog box comes up, select Delete from the drop-down menu and click OK. You will get the following message:

and the problem is solved.

If you are using Windows 95/95B/98/98SE/NT/ME/2008/Home/7, I would suggest burning a Linux CD (images - just select Live CD from the middle menu) and using it to find and remove the file.

Animated GIF

For those of you who didn't quite follow that and are running Windows 2000-Vista, simply download Cedrick Collomb's Unlocker here, and install it. After that, I have created an animated GIF file showing the whole process.

Animated GIF (37.3 MB)

If you are running Windows 95-ME/2008/Home/7, get a Linux live CD image here (select Live CD from the middle menu), burn it to a disc, boot into it, and find and remove the file.

Links

Printer-friendly version
Linux homepage
Unlocker homepage