I created a mess with symlinks that I cannot clear now:

- moved a directory from /home/user1/somedir to /largestoragearea/somedir
- created a symlink to its old place (symlinked /largestoragearea/somedir to /home/user1/somedir), which was a big mistake, since /home is also a symlink to /usr/home on that machine
- also symlinked /largestoragearea/somedir to /home/user2/somedir (this was also a mistake of the same sort)
- when seeing the mistake I successfully removed one of the symlinks (/home/user2/somedir)

But now I am still faced with the folowing problems:
- /home/user1/somedir seems to be not existing (although it was never deleted)
- listing /largestoragearea shows that there is a symlink (/home/user1/somedir) pointing to /largestoragearea/somedir
- /home/user1/somedir cannot be removed (no such file error)
- the ownership of /largestoragearea/somedir can no longer be changed (by root!), it remains owned by the person who is the owner of the (not existing?) symlink /home/user1/somedir

So, how can I clear this mess up?
I.e. how to remove the symlink (/home/user1/somedir), that seems to be not existing on one hand (when trying to list or remove it), but seems to exist on the other hand (since it produces strange side effects as if it was existing).

Is it a file system error? How to correct it?

to list a symlink you got to use ls -ld

when trying to do something with the directory use tab to type out the directory instead, this may take care of any spaces or funny characters in the name of the directory.

it may even be a hdd error, type "dmesg" to see if there're any problems.

Ls -ld only shows the link to the parent directory (naturally), and the semi-existing symlink is not shown.

Dmesg does not show any errors.

But I checked that I still have that semi-existing symlink, and the ownership of the other directory still cannot be changed by root (the latter being the side effect).

Used fsck /largestoragearea and now an other strange thing occured:
It seemed to correct an error, but the only thing that happened is that the semi-existing symlink now points to /largestoragearea/somedir/somedir (previously it pointed to /largestoragearea/somedir).

are you using reiserfs? if so backup your stuff now, and you may have to reformat the disk. reiserfs is bit more complicated and doesn't fix itself well after fsck.

if you're using ext? then I don't know, maybe umount and run e2fsck -f until there's no errors.

It is not reiserfs (I use an other kind of unix there that must not be named at this forum).
The problem seems to be solved in the meantime: since the semi-existing symlink pointed to a surplus directory (not existing before) after the fsck, I risked to delete that directory and I succeeded.