How do I rename files with strange characters

Question

I have file with greek or cyrillic characters.

It is not owned by me, but by the web server user (www).

I cannot use the shell as the web server user (www) or as root, but I've used a script (executed by the web server user) to set the modbits directory it is in to 777 and the file itself to 666.

I am not able to rename (or delete this) file. Even using the inode and using find fails:

$ ls -i1
19120017 Idezbox - коробка.jpeg

$ find . -inum 19120017 -exec mv -i {} sane \;
mv: cannot move `./Idezbox - коробка.jpeg' to `sane': No such file or directory

Wildcards fail:

$ mv Idezbox*.jpeg sane
mv: cannot move `Idezbox - коробка.jpeg' to `sane': No such file or directory

The following Perl-script also fails:

find . -type f -print0 | \
perl -n0e '$new = $_; if($new =~ s/[^[:ascii:]]/x/g) {
  print("Renaming $_ to $new\n");
  rename($_, $new);
}'

It prints out:

Renaming Idezbox - коробка.jpeg to Idezbox - xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.jpeg

but the subsequent rename command has no effect.
However, note that there are 7 greek characters and 14 "x"-es.

Moving to the directory above and trying to delete "Junk":

$ rm -riv Junk
rm: descend into directory `Junk'? yes
rm: cannot remove `Junk/Idezbox - коробка.jpeg': No such file or directory

Some requested output:

$ mount | grep "on /ifi/asgard/k00"
asgard:/ifi/asgard/k00 on /ifi/asgard/k00 type nfs (rw,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,hard,intr,addr=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)

$ df .
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
asgard:/ifi/asgard/k00
                     104857600  53201568  51656032  51% /ifi/asgard/k00
$ ls -al
total 88
drwxrwxrwx  2 www     ifiweb   4096 2014-08-11 14:16 .
drwxrwsrwx 14 inf5270 inf5270  4096 2014-08-11 14:15 ..
-rw-rw-rw-  1 www     ifiweb  35176 2012-04-14 13:38 Idezbox - коробка.jpeg
-rwxrw-r--  1 gisle   ifi-a     139 2014-08-11 14:15 perl-rename.sh

$ who ami i
gisle    pts/122      2014-08-11 11:37 (safir.ifi.uio.no:13.0)

After having read through all comments and answers (thanks everybody!) I no longer think this is just about escaping or quoting the cyrillic characters. I need to look into the NFS angle.

Edit 2015-10-02:

The problem turned out to be NFS-related. Since the file was created directly on a NFS-mounted volume, which I accessed from another computer, nothing worked. Logging directly in on the server as root allowed a sysadmin (I am a mere user on this particular system and can't do this) to delete the file (using some standard method to escape the Greek characters). Kudos to G-Man for putting me on the right track (in a comment). If G-Man is still around and converts his comment into an answer, I'll accept it.

Answer 1

I know this is old but if you're looking to rename a file with weird characters, you can use:

find . -inum INODE -exec rename {} NEW_NAME \;

So in this case you could have used:

find . inum 19120017 -exec rename {} sane \;

Answer 2

Not taking into account the NFS part of the problem, some days ago I had a similar issue while trying to delete a file with no name / blank name. Well, actually, it was not blank - its name was the octal code for the end of transmission character (\004). How it was created in there, no idea. However, what I did to remove it was to echo its filename and then pass that using xargs into the rm command.

1. First, I got the real name by running

   ls -lb
   

   That will show the octal name for the files in the directory. In this case, \004.

2. Then, I ran something like this:

   echo "\004" | xargs rm 
   

That was my workaround - maybe you can try something like the above, but using the entire filename (Idezbox - коробка.jpeg) in octal.

Answer 3

Your question indicates that this problem file is on an NFS-mounted filesystem, and nothing you do from your RHEL client successfully touches the file.  This suggests that the problem has to do with the interface between your client and the NFS server.  It may be necessary to login directly to the server to manipulate the file, or at least access it from a workstation running a different OS.

Answer 4

As workaround, and if the files are distinguishable by the ascii characters, try renaming the file using wildcards, i.e.

mv Idez*jpeg renamed.jpeg

Answer 5

@pacoseventeen 's answer was basically correct, I think you just need to enclose the braces with double quotes. I wouldn't use rename since that's for bulk renaming.

find . -inum INODE -exec mv "{}" NEW_NAME \;

I just used this on a file named ?? that ls -Q identified as "\033\033".