bsd man page for clri

CLRI(8) 						      System Manager's Manual							   CLRI(8)

NAME
       clri - clear i-node

SYNOPSIS
       clri filesystem i-number ...

DESCRIPTION
       Clri writes zeros on the i-nodes with the decimal i-numbers on the filesystem.  After clri, any blocks in the affected file will show up as
       `missing' in an icheck(8) of the filesystem.

       Read and write permission is required on the specified file system device.  The i-node becomes allocatable.

       The primary purpose of this routine is to remove a file which for some reason appears in no directory.  If it is  used  to  zap	an  i-node
       which does appear in a directory, care should be taken to track down the entry and remove it.  Otherwise, when the i-node is reallocated to
       some new file, the old entry will still point to that file.  At that point removing the old entry will destroy the new file.  The new entry
       will again point to an unallocated i-node, so the whole cycle is likely to be repeated again and again.

SEE ALSO
       fsck(8), icheck(8)

BUGS
       If the file is open, clri is likely to be ineffective.

																	   CLRI(8)