strange behavior of 'rm'

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Time for me to chip in:

ORIGIN:  Back in 2008, I was able to use a script
('sugar-forget-bundle') to manually "clean" the activity_repository of
entries for Activities which I had manually removed from my XO.
Nowadays, the interface(s) to the activity_repository appear to have
changed - I no longer have a script which would clean the repository.

BACKGROUND:  "What the activity_repository contains" became interesting
to me when Quozl found a reference, in a system dump I had taken while
troubleshooting the Record Activity, to a version of Record which was no
longer present on that system.  In addition, there were times (NOT
consistent) when I would see a messed-up Home Ring View after
customizing a newly-installed build (I "hook up" many additional
activities).  I noticed that this kind of 'overlapping icons in Home
View' situation was often accompanied by there being multiple entries
with the same activity_name in file 'favorite_activities'.

> I'm talking about the problem of the file not being deleted by rm yet
> with the absence of Sugar restarts.

WHY I WAS USING 'rm':  Through trial and error, I determined that
(sooner or later) a messy Home View would show up "clean" if I performed
(repetitively, if need be): delete ~/.sugar.default/favorite_activities,
then ctl-alt-erase to restart Sugar.

[I *knew* that restarting Sugar would rewrite 'favorite_activities'.  It
was my hope (which was realized, sooner or later) that at the time it
got rewritten, whatever had caused the messy Home View would be gone.]

In other words, I *wanted* to restart Sugar.  What I posted was that (a
couple of times, NOT REPRODUCIBLE ON DEMAND), I had not accomplished the
first part (the deleting of file 'favorite_activities') of my procedure.
 Note: on the most recent occasion when the 'rm' did not work, I entered
'sudo rm' (even though I *was* root) -- then that file did delete.

[It is NOT true that plain 'rm' does not work for me (in this specific
situation).  I've had to "clean" a messy Home View maybe a dozen times.
 And my empirical procedure did ultimately work (sooner or later).]

----

None of the anomalies I've noticed ('rm' not working; messy Home View;
enlarged 'favorite_activities'; old version of Record being mentioned in
a log) have been REPRODUCIBLE ON DEMAND - so I don't consider them
suitable for a ticket.  I typically write a ticket because I believe
that *others* will run into the same situation I've seen.  When I don't
know if something is a problem or not, I might post about it with the
intent of "alerting" others - in case they too notice something similar.

mikus