Table of Contents

BASH - Commands - ls - link count is zero

Running an ls command shows that the link count of the file or directory is showing as 0.

For example: 

ls -al

returns: 

-rwxr-xr-x 0 peter peter  20M Apr 29 11:02 afile

The 0 after the three sets of permissions is the link count, and usually specifies the number of hard links the file has, or for directories the number of directories within the directory + this directory itself.

NOTE: For any directory, the minimum amount of links should be at least 2 (self . and parent ..) + the number of sub-directories, as long as the directory isn't rmdir'd.

If the directory is deleted, then the link count is generally 0.

Try

find . -type f -links 0 -size +10000 -ls

returns: 

187826224      0 -rwxr-xr-x   0 peter    peter    19947047 Apr 29 11:02 afile

Then delete the file using the inode, in this example 187826224. 

find . -inum 187826224 -exec rm -i {} \;

Solution

Reboot.