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Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

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vortis
Posts: 74
Joined: 2009-03-11 00:40
Location: New Zealand

Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

#1 Post by vortis »

Anyone know what the 'ls' command means when it outputs the file name in red on black, with the permissions, owner, etc. all missing? The 'man' page was of no help. In the example below, from a DVD ROM, the third file was OK and I could read it. The first two could not be read, even as root.

Code: Select all

?--------- ? ?    ?         ?                ? /media/dvdrom/DVD_RTAV/VR_MANGR.BUP
?--------- ? ?    ?         ?                ? /media/dvdrom/DVD_RTAV/VR_MOVIE.VRO
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 132624 2007-09-20 02:18 VR_MANGR.IFO
I susepct either files are deleted, but for some reason still visible, or else they are damaged and therefore inaccessible.

fsmithred
Posts: 1873
Joined: 2008-01-02 14:52

Re: Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

#2 Post by fsmithred »

Those are broken symlinks. The targets are missing.

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vortis
Posts: 74
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Location: New Zealand

Re: Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

#3 Post by vortis »

fsmithred wrote:Those are broken symlinks. The targets are missing.
Ahah... that would make sense (although I didn't realise the DVD-RAM format used symlinks)

Is there any way to read the DVD 'raw', with a view to figuring out what's wrong and maybe fixing it?
I tried the 'dd' command but it didn't want to know - gave an error message to the efect that it could not read the device.

fsmithred
Posts: 1873
Joined: 2008-01-02 14:52

Re: Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

#4 Post by fsmithred »

Well, I just broke a symlink to look at it with ls -l, and it still shows all the information normally, but the link and the target names are red on black. No question marks. Maybe your disc is scratched. If that's the case, there are a lot of tricks you can try to get it to read better. http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Scratched-CD Or you might have luck reading it in a different drive.

hameau
Posts: 257
Joined: 2008-11-13 17:42
Location: France

Re: Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

#5 Post by hameau »

vortis wrote:... from a DVD ROM ...
Is this a commercial pressed DVD-ROM? (In other words, not a DVD-R or RW that has been recorded.) It may just be because of DRM or copy-protection, both of which can play fast and loose with recognised file systems specs.
Nick.

smallchange
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Re: Meaning of strange 'ls' colours

#6 Post by smallchange »

To see what colors are assigned to which files run

Code: Select all

dircolors -p

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