Removing a directory with colon from CIFS

Question

I cannot delete a directory containing a colon (using Ubuntu) on a network drive (filesystem: CIFS). How can I delete this directory? (no root privileges, but do have read/write permission)

Output of rmdir ':5N0A210'/ and rmdir ':5N0A210':

rmdir: failed to remove ':5N0A210': No such file or directory

Output of ls -li:

123011781 drwxr-sr-x 2 username domain users      0 May 31 10:00 :5N0A210

Output of ls -1b:

:5N0A210

Output of find . -inum 123011781 -delete:

find: cannot delete ‘./:5N0A210’: No such file or directory

Output of rename 's|:|-|g' *:

Can't rename :5N0A210 -5N0A210: No such file or directory

I just realized I can create directory ':test' and also able to delete with no errors.

I can also create ':5N0A210' and delete it, but it is shown immediately after I refresh GUI. ls -li shows the same inode number as before.

I can also create ':4N0A210' (changed '5' to '4') and delete it with no errors.

All testing was done in same directory as ':5N0A210'.

Answer 1

From the directory in which :5N0A210 is located:

rm -rf ./\:5N0A210

rm -rf ':5N0A210'

rm -rf ./:5N0A210

rm -rf :5N0A210

These all work in my environment.

UPDATE

You can also just remove it from the server side using the above commands. If you don't have access to the server, have someone who does have that access remove it.

Answer 2

There are a series of reserved characters that are not allowed in Windows filenames \ / : * ? " < > |. CIFS follows this rule, which means you cannot use any of those characters in a filename.

SAMBA can be configured with vfs catia to translate such characters into visually similar alternatives, but this isn't the default and may not be configured in your instance. (If it is, a simple shell character wildcard ? would be enough to match the colon, ie rmdir ?5N0A210. But you've already tried that and it failed.)

The only other solution is to remove the directory directly on the server hosting the filesystem. If this is Windows then a filesystem check will forceably rename the directory. If it's Unix/Linux with SAMBA then a simple rmdir (or rm -rf) will suffice.