bad filenames

[Kim Chr. Madsen]

> Since this is a UNIX (tm) group I'm going to ask "how was a file
> with a '/' in it's name created?" I *_CANT_* do it here (BSD 4.3).

Well, last time it happened here it was due to a user's foot, by which
he accidently turned off the power to the computer, while unbatching
news!

What happened was that one could read news with ls(1), the
indirect/direct diskblocks was pretty jammed up.  Accidently the
phrase "what s/he said " appeared as a filename and this really made a
pain in the neck.  Trying to clean up the system after this wasn't
easy, although a good job was performed by fsck(1M), but the file with
a '/' in its name caused fsck to go into an infinite loop.  Trying to
remove the file in a conventional way failed miserable since the
filename violates one of the most sacred laws in the UNIX world "thou
shall not put slashes in thy filenames".

What we actually did was to backup as much of the /usr/spool disk,
reformatted, and created a new filesystem on it and restored the saved
data.  I sure do hope it will take a very long time before such things
happen again, it took 3+ hours and 1+ litre of perspiration to fix.

Regards,

Kim Chr. Madsen, AmbraSoft A/S, Rojelskaer 15, DK-2840 Holte (Denmark)
UUCP: kimcm at ambush.dk, PHONE: +45 2424 111, FAX: +45 2423 090
				   
		   You shouldn't say it's no good.
		  You should say you do not like it;
	      and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.
		 -- James Abbott McNeill Whistler --