rm -rf: cannot remove `/opt/jetty': Directory not empty

Question

I have a script using the following command to remove a folder:

ssh -q root@hostname sh -c 'rm -rf /opt/jetty/'

Most of the times it works fine, but occasionally I get this message:

rm: cannot remove `/opt/jetty': Directory not empty

The only suspicious point is the folder to delete contains a lock file which is being used by shell command flock to acquire file lock. But I tried to remove the folder manually when the file was even being locked by flock, it get succeeded.

update:

---

The environment is Linux

# uname -a
Linux XXX 2.6.32-504.8.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Dec 19 12:09:25 EST 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

rm didn't alias to anything, the out put of rm:

# rm
rm: missing operand
Try `rm --help' for more information.

I have a service script to start Jetty which creates a file lock inside the folder. Some snippet as shown below:

JETTY_LOCK=/opt/jetty/jetty_lock

start(){
    #open file descriptor and acquire lock
    exec 200>$JETTY_LOCK
    flock -x -n 200 || { exec 200>&-;echo 'jetty is being started by another process.'; sleep 5; exit 0; }
    ...
    cd /opt/jetty/
   ...
    echo $!>&200
    fi
    flock -u 200  #release lock
    exec 200>&-   #close file descriptor
}

update:

---

After the error reproduced, I found only jetty_lock file was still remaining int /opt/jetty, does that mean flock stops file lock from deleting? I cannot provide more details because I don't know when will it happen the next time...

Answer 1

To debug ssh session use "-v" option instead of "-q" and analize the output.

Try to use absolute paths in remote command. So this looks like:

# ssh -v root@hostname /bin/sh -c '/bin/rm -rf /opt/jetty/'