[stefaug]

Henk,
I take ir you actually meant "ls -ld...". etc.

# ls -ld /usr/assist
drwxrwxrwx 17 root users 84216 Jun 27 14:18 /usr/assist

ls -l /usr/assist is a bit much as there are 2000+ files in the directory.

# ls -l /usr/assist/ADSO33.DAT
ls: /usr/assist/ADSO33.DAT: Permission denied

natural_pilot,

hmmmm...that ADSO33.DAT looks suspiciously like the convention used by
another popular operating system...
so: the file system in use by the partition in which ADSO33.DAT lives
is what?

The file is a cobol data file and is accompanied by a ADSO33.KEY index. There are close to a thousand of them in this directory, most accessible, but all of a sudden a certain number not. It is a textbased POS system and is running for ten plus years.

that partition is mounted read/write? right? a local (to the user)
partition, or on the net and shared?

The file is in the root filesystem.

or, is this *.DAT in the customer's /home on a Linux formatted partition?

The filesystem is reiserfs

has it been fsck'ed in living memory? are there errors found now, if
checked? after checking, is there anything i /home/lost+found ?

Since it is in the root I will gave to bring the system down and check - will come back to you on that one.

the permissions of the directory the file is in is what?

777 for now - I have tried a few things and will tighten up again after we fixed this problem.

has s/he accessed that directory while logged into KDE/Gnome/other
Linux GUI as root?

It is a textbased POS system that is accessed via ssh / telnet sessions.

if *DAT is inside /home on a linux formatted partition--from inside
user's /home, do this and copy/paste to here:

ls -hal .ICE*

The files reside in /usr/assist and there are no ICE* files in the directory.

Guys THANK YOU for taking the time out to help me - it is appreciated ver much.