On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:26:01 GMT, stefaug
<stefaug@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

>
>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.

You may find this an off the wall question but there is method to my
madness:
Just how many files do you have in the directory where this file
resides?