[SOLVED] Can not delete, rename or use the mv command on an errant file

[SpecialEd]

About a week or so ago, something happened (I have no idea what at this point) and two files got corrupted. I ended up with a file called

Peter.Gabriel.Secret.World.Live.2012.720p.mkv

But when I clicked on it, in actuality it was a completely different video. I can not delete, rename, or use the mv command as it says “no such file or directory exists.” I can copy it and delete the copy. I created a file in another directory with the same name and was able to copy it to the original directory, therefore overwriting the original file. Now I have a 2B text file instead of a 500MB video file but I still can’t delete it. It's not a matter of permissions, I think it has to do with the actual name but there are no leading or following spaces, etc., that I can see. I am running KDE Neon User Edition and using Dolphin and the command line. The errant file is on a 2TB USB drive using NTFS.

[GreyGeek]

You did check the immutable bit?

[Snowhog]

Have you tried puting the file name in quotes (single or double)? And if that doesn't work, try replacing all the periods; except for the last one; with a ?

[GreyGeek]

When ever I use youtube-dl or mps-youtube to download an mp4 video I get a half-dozen files created, a msg about "not being able to merge audio and mp4", or something like that, and then the result is an mkv file. Usually I can convert the mkv file to an mp4 file, but I got tired of that and installed a dl plugin in FireFox to dl videos and specifically select the 720p mp4 version to dl.

I never had a file lock up the you have but I'd wager that the problem was probably caused by using one of those two programs, or a defective FF plugin.

[chimak111]

I'm not sure it's anything to do with the filename, per se:

$ touch Peter.Gabriel.Secret.World.Live.2012.720p.mkv
$ rm Peter.Gabriel.Secret.World.Live.2012.720p.mkv

works just fine.

[SpecialEd]

You did check the immutable bit?

First I've heard of this and apparently, I'm not understanding the lsattr and chattr commands as I keep getting "invalid argument."

Have you tried puting the file name in quotes (single or double)? And if that doesn't work, try replacing all the periods; except for the last one; with a ?

I tried double quotes and several wildcards. I just tried single quotes and the ? (with and without quotes, single and double) to no avail.

[Snowhog]

Who owns the file?

[SpecialEd]

I, regular user, do.

-rwxrwxrwx 1 specialed specialed          2 Aug 26 18:28 Peter.Gabriel.Secret.World.Live.2012.720p.mkv

[SpecialEd]

>>>>>> I'm not understanding the lsattr and chattr commands as I keep getting "invalid argument."

Just realized those commands aren't applicable to NTFS, correct?

[Snowhog]

Are there other files on the NTFS formatted USB drive, or is this the only one?

[SpecialEd]

Are there other files on the NTFS formatted USB drive, or is this the only one?

Oh yeah, about 850GBs.

[Snowhog]

Do you have access to a Windows PC that you can mount the USB drive to? Can the file be deleted from Windows?

[SpecialEd]

Do you have access to a Windows PC that you can mount the USB drive to? Can the file be deleted from Windows?

Yes I had my son do that a little while ago and got an error code. I just gave it back to him to run error checking on the disk under Windows.

[SpecialEd]

Running CHKDSK under Windows did the trick. I forget sometimes when dealing with USB drives that I'm not dealing with a Linux file system. Thanks for the help.