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I'm on Fedora distro server and OSX on Mac as client connected via crossover cable using a local IP. Fedora is serving web pages and the Mac is browsing and connected via ssh on the terminal. I was working on a problem with the page content and writing a file to the server with vim when this started happening. Not a big deal, but its strange. I could see my files but not open them,

  • The file was not open in another virtual term or on the mac, because I quit the file after creating it. Then problems started when I tried to reopen to add more log data.
  • I wasn't typing anything special to open the file: # vi file_name-v1.
  • no weird naming, just underscore and hyphen.
  • I could see the file in the directory, but I couldn't open it.

So, what's going on? Why can I see this file but not open it. And here's where it gets strange. When I couldn't open the file on one machine, the other machine could open it.

What I've ended up with is four or five log files I've been opening up on one machine, adding some data, then when I couldn't open the same file to append, I had to create a new file. They're all in the same directory. Its just weird. Does SSH throw my files into the Bermuda Triangle or Neutral Zone or something?

UPDATE- HAHA! I'm (<-- idiot) staring at this. Why can't I get this. It was the frig'n underscore, hyphen swap! I write these files like two or three a day, and the one time I use underscores in a date! Just got to laugh!

D-Dev_Notes_06-28-2011-4
D-Dev_Notes_06_28_2011-5
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Do you get any error message or it just silently refuses to open the file? – Erika Jun 29 '11 at 5:15
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"I couldn't open it." isn't a good enough description of what exactly you typed and what exactly happened in terms of error messages etc. Can you update your question and cut&paste some error messages into it (and maybe the output of ls -l file_name*) – RedGrittyBrick Jun 29 '11 at 9:50
No error message. It just won't open. I'll add a few new details above in UPDATE. – xtian Jun 30 '11 at 5:22
For future reference, use bash autocomplete with TAB to finish up names. That should prevent similar mishaps. – bbaja42 Jun 30 '11 at 6:03
That was it exactly, but what started as a mistyped underscore in the first file caused a cascade where I had both a date with underscores and a date with hyphens. When I went to autocompete the last version, I was somehow in a pattern where that was not the last file. They were hop-scotching. Because, from the Linux box I was grabbing the file name from history, but from the Mac SSH session, I was retyping the whole of the string! I was autocompeleting the should-be-name on the original-mistyped-file. – xtian Jun 30 '11 at 20:54

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