I have recently become aware of Windows and the “index.dat” problem. Microsuck | Microsoft’s Really Hidden Files I set out to delete them without third party programs. This is near-impossible to do through windows so I turned to wonderful openSuse. I found them all via dolphin and a search, but when I went to go find them manually and to see what else I could find through the terminal I get this:
-a means just like the normal output but also show dotfiles, so no totals displayed since that’s what a plain ls does
-l means show details for displayed files in long format
-al means just the combination of the two options since they do not conflict.
I think the ls logic is: count the number of qualifying entries in the directory and show that as the total. Then decide to show the entry or not depending on whether the metadata can be accessed. So this logic goes a bit haywire in the presence of NTFS hidden files.
I’m 99.9% sure that’s not showing the total number of files/directories in
that location but maybe shows blocks instead since, in my case, a
directory shows 8 (8 x 512K blocks = 4096). That calculation may also
work for NTFS.
Good luck.
On 01/05/2011 05:06 PM, ken yap wrote:
>
> I think the ls logic is: count the number of qualifying entries in the
> directory and show that as the total. Then decide to show the entry or
> not depending on whether the metadata can be accessed. So this logic
> goes a bit haywire in the presence of NTFS hidden files.
>
>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.15 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
Yes you’re right, that’s what info ls says. But it’s not very useful information these days, and is a hangover from Unix days.
$ ls -l | head -1
total 40
$ ls -al | head -1
total 1972
Coming back to the point, the man page says about -a, or alternatively --all (two hyphens) that it doesn’t ignore entries starting with a dot. Which is a different concept from hidden files in Windows; Unix “hides” files by a naming convention, not by an attribute of the file.
On 01/05/2011 02:06 PM, BenRhoads wrote:
> ls thinks that there are 28 files (Hence the total:28 afaik) but only
> two are shown. Any ideas on why this is?
I believe that’s the size in KB, not the number of files.
I’m assuming that the “.” and “…” directories are sizeless, so that means there is still something taking up space.
But if linux and Windows hide things differently, then I won’t be able to see them anyway since Windows has messed with the storage of the file?
And what is weirder is that Dolphin can see these files through a “Find File” search.
My memory is really fuzzy here, but does not the “dir” command in openSUSE in fact just call “ls -l” … ?? Or was than in an older openSUSE version ?
I think I need to search ebay for new memory, as mine is getting worse and worse as the years go by. This is the SuSE foru… err… openSUSE forums? Right ?
oldcpu wrote:
> My memory is really fuzzy here, but does not the “dir” command in
> openSUSE in fact just call “ls -l” … ?? Or was than in an older
> openSUSE version ?
this in a terminal might reveal the answer there:
alias | grep dir
here it returns
alias dir='ls -l'
and, did you find a source for new memory? if so please PM me and i’ll
send you a finders fee!!
Lol !! I’ve been looking for it, but I can’t recall the web site where its listed for sale (or was it for lease ? ) … ahh … sorry, what was I looking for again ??
Not sure about windows 7 but my experience with NTFS and previous is that Linux doesn’t care if windows thinks it’s a hidden file. It’s just another file to Linux. I could be wrong…
>
> DenverD;2274462 Wrote:
>> and, did you find a source for new memory? if so please PM me and i’ll
>> send you a finders fee!!
>
> Lol !! I’ve been looking for it, but I can’t recall the web site where
> its listed for sale (or was it for lease ? ) … ahh … sorry, what was
> I looking for again ??
Wish you guys wouldn’t rub this in. For the last 5-10 years I’ve spent far
more time looking for the @#$%^ tool I just laid down than actually using
that tool.
I used to joke that the best reason for carrying a drivers license was to
let me look up my name - now it’s no longer a joke…
the “.” directory is the current directory and the “…” directory is the parent directory which contains the current directory
Right, are they links or physical files?
Not sure about windows 7 but my experience with NTFS and previous is that Linux doesn’t care if windows thinks it’s a hidden file. It’s just another file to Linux. I could be wrong…
Ah, but these index.dat aren’t just hidden files They’re “super hidden” files.
