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I ran BleachBit for Linux on an external hard drive with the wipe-free-space function (empty space is overwritten with zeros) and for some reason the program crashed mid-course. It left over a temporary file with an insanely long file name:

tmpyisQ2lCrC8MCvCZIVz_U4P5WC1kwF-DFJG-9C9zPhvONcfHacavFQlNuoqdXiV9.JyKNLF314NVyOQUn_tnggBv9RuJukAru.bqS9EPFAd78OLxMacIq2IfcDYiZErRRqN0KRYPvVbp2MO8MhQTYbW9jfURSMRm6HZfTP6IH3eXsJQT.cNIyxe.D1eJwrNr_o0YYLmxctI5P10..gLuPiO5QlPx08.GiSp30o-.beACOcE0NQLz8-0KzODp

As it turns out, I'm not able to delete it:

dave@mypc:/media/dave/usb-hdd$ sudo rm -f tmpyisQ2lCrC8MCvCZIVz_U4P5WC1kwF-DFJG-9C9zPhvONcfHacavFQlNuoqdXiV9.JyKNLF314NVyOQUn_tnggBv9RuJukAru.bqS9EPFAd78OLxMacIq2IfcDYiZErRRqN0KRYPvVbp2MO8MhQTYbW9jfURSMRm6HZfTP6IH3eXsJQT.cNIyxe.D1eJwrNr_o0YYLmxctI5P10..gLuPiO5QlPx08.GiSp30o-.beACOcE0NQLz8-0KzODp
dave@mypc:/media/dave/usb-hdd$ ll
total 2
-rwxrwxrwx 1 dave dave  7315 Okt  2 13:11  tmpyisQ2lCrC8MCvCZIVz_U4P5WC1kwF-DFJG-9C9zPhvONcfHacavFQlNuoqdXiV9.JyKNLF314NVyOQUn_tnggBv9RuJukAru.bqS9EPFAd78OLxMacIq2IfcDYiZErRRqN0KRYPvVbp2MO8MhQTYbW9jfURSMRm6HZfTP6IH3eXsJQT.cNIyxe.D1eJwrNr_o0YYLmxctI5P10..gLuPiO5QlPx08.GiSp30o-.beACOcE0NQLz8-0KzODp
drwxrwxrwx 1 dave dave 12288 Sep 15 21:47 '[backup]'

Furthermore, gnome-disks says that the HDD is almost completely full (8.4 MB free space) although it's 3 TB large and only a fraction is actually used.

How can I delete this leftover file and how do I reclaim the unused space?

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  • Have you tried something like sudo rm -f tmpyisQ2lCrC8MCvCZI* ?
    – Dave White
    Oct 11, 2020 at 13:36
  • Are you able to move the file? If you could determine the size of the file, you could create a partition that could contain it, then delete the partition.
    – Ramhound
    Oct 11, 2020 at 13:42
  • Hey, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, neither moving nor using a wildcard works. Renaming doesn't work either: The item could not be renamed. There is no "tmpyisQ2lCrC8MCvCZIVz_U...0o-.beACOcE0NQLz8-0KzODp" in this folder. Perhaps it was just moved or deleted?
    – david
    Oct 11, 2020 at 13:46
  • Superweird...never encountered this issue before. But there must be some remedy to deal with excessively long file names in Linux
    – david
    Oct 11, 2020 at 13:47
  • 1
    Hypothesis: the filesystem is corrupted. Maybe it was corrupted in the first place and this is the reason the program crashed. Or maybe the program actions triggered the corruption. Hardware error may or may not be involved. What was the exact error? Is there anything relevant in dmesg? in logs? Depending on what you find, (1) consider backing up the most important data from the disk now; (2) consider testing the hardware (e.g. SMART test). If you think the hardware is healthy then (3) check the filesystem: run fsck if possible. What is the type of the filesystem?
    – Kamil Maciorowski
    Oct 11, 2020 at 14:26

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