We are using hadoop to split a table into smaller files to feed to mahout, but in the process, we created a huge amount of _temporary logs. we have an nfs mount for the hadoop volume so we can use all the linux commands to delete folders files, but we just can't get them to be deleted, here's what I've tried so far: hadoop fs -rmr /.../_temporary : hangs for hours and does nothing on nfs mount: rmr -rf /.../_temporary :hangs for hours and does nothing find . -name '*.*' -type f -delete : same as above the folders look like this (38 of these folders inside _temporary): drwxr-xr-x 319324 user user 319322 Oct 24 12:12 _attempt_201310221525_0404_r_000000_0 the content of these are actually folders, not files. each one of those 319322 folders has exactly one file inside. not sure why the do the logging this way. Any help is appreciated.