Hi,
Please let me know the significance of . and .. directories in a file system.
One of my current file system doesn;t hv .. directory and i can run this command
du -k .
no permission in the current directory.
thanks
sita

Single dot is the current directory itself. When you open ".", you open the current directory without needing to know its name.

Double dot is the parent directory. So "cd .." will move you to the parent directory.

Thanks for responding.
My problem is
I dont find .. in my file system at all when I do ls -als
so when run du -k . it says
cannot find the working directory

How do i create that .. directory

What version of unix are you using? And what type of file system?

In general, if .. is supposed to be there but isn't, you have a damaged file system. You should unmount it and run fsck on it.

mine is a.i.x 5.2.0.0.
I took a tar and blown the file system and recreated it.
But still i don;t see that .. directory and may of my program fails.
sample
du -k .
cannot find the current direectory
thanks
sita

You need an aix expert and I have never used aix. But if know how to run fsck on the disk, that might be worth a try.

I tried running fsck too. It didn't help

Can some body else advice how to go about or faced this kind of issues ?.
thanks
ssmian