Hudson 1.374 under Tomcat in a Redhat 5 EL box.

I believe this must be an issue with usage of UTF-8 encoded files, in my case the failure is with a files created by a test case that creates directories and files with UTF-8 encoded characters. Once I manually removed this directory (and some other files with UTF-8 characters) all was well:

Started by user anonymous
Clearing workspace...

java.io.IOException: Unable to delete <OMITTED/linux_rhAS50-x86-64/debug/dmthudson_11726> - files in dir: [<OMMITED/linux_rhAS50-x86-64/debug/dmthudson_11726/save_f%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD_dir]>
at hudson.Util.deleteFile(Util.java:259)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:302)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.FilePath$10.invoke(FilePath.java:833)
at hudson.FilePath$10.invoke(FilePath.java:831)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:753)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:735)
at hudson.FilePath.deleteContents(FilePath.java:831)
at hudson.plugins.perforce.PerforceSCM.checkout(PerforceSCM.java:476)
at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1061)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.checkout(AbstractBuild.java:479)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.run(AbstractBuild.java:411)
at hudson.model.Run.run(Run.java:1272)
at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:46)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:129)
Retrying after 10 seconds

In a previous failure it was complaining about the following:
Started by an SCM change
Clearing workspace...
java.io.IOException: Unable to delete <OMITTED/linux_rhAS50-x86-64/debug/dmthudson_11726/logs> - files in dir: [<OMITTED/linux_rhAS50-x86-64/debug/dmthudson_11726/logs/EXTSTRING_TEST_f%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD_11726_91_dmthudson_en_US_UTF-8.log]>
at hudson.Util.deleteFile(Util.java:259)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:302)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.FilePath$10.invoke(FilePath.java:833)
at hudson.FilePath$10.invoke(FilePath.java:831)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:753)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:735)
at hudson.FilePath.deleteContents(FilePath.java:831)
at hudson.plugins.perforce.PerforceSCM.checkout(PerforceSCM.java:476)
at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1061)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.checkout(AbstractBuild.java:479)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.run(AbstractBuild.java:411)
at hudson.model.Run.run(Run.java:1272)
at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:46)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:129)
Retrying after 10 seconds

I actually misspoke.

While Hudson thinks the file/dir has the sequence f%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD it should really have the sequence f%F6%F6.

This is because this filename is actually intended to be encoded in ISO-8859-1 not UTF-8 and somehow when Hudson tried to remove it it ended up with %EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD

I can't really change that filename because that is the purpose of the unit test, to verify that we deal properly (inside the test case the encoding is properly set to ISO-8859-1 etc...)

Any recommendations on how to make Hudson properly delete the file ?

BTW, this removal was triggered by the option on the P4 plugin to clean the workspace.

From your comments, it seems that you think this is a hudson core problem and not a problem in the TFS plugin? The description contains a dos prompt and your other comment seems to mention linux, is it the same problem?

After looking at the code, I now actually think this is a problem with java.io.File
I noticed how you do dir.getFiles() and then call delete on the elements of the File[] returned.
I think there is some transcoding of filenames happening there, which IMO should not happen.

I'm getting a very similar stacktrace with hudson 1.379 running on tomcat 6.0.29 with java 5. I also have not made any changes to the job config. The error was triggered by the CloneSCM plugin:

java.io.IOException: Unable to delete /home/scripts/hudson/jobs/Stella-UI_start_selenium_tests/workspace/trunk/UI/src/main/webapp/Stella/Html/Pricing/MassPriceEventAsyncOverrides.jsp
at hudson.Util.deleteFile(Util.java:260)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:302)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.Util.deleteRecursive(Util.java:301)
at hudson.Util.deleteContentsRecursive(Util.java:221)
at hudson.FilePath$10.invoke(FilePath.java:833)
at hudson.FilePath$10.invoke(FilePath.java:831)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:753)
at hudson.FilePath.act(FilePath.java:735)
at hudson.FilePath.deleteContents(FilePath.java:831)
at hudson.plugins.cloneworkspace.CloneWorkspaceSCM.checkout(CloneWorkspaceSCM.java:125)
at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1082)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.checkout(AbstractBuild.java:479)
at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractRunner.run(AbstractBuild.java:411)
at hudson.model.Run.run(Run.java:1280)
at hudson.maven.MavenModuleSetBuild.run(MavenModuleSetBuild.java:293)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:137)

I went to check the actual file through a terminal session and it has weird statuses:

ls -l

br-xrwS-w- 263 1230008912 1347223560 116, 115 Mar 10 1973 MassPriceEventAsyncOverrides.jsp

file -i MassPriceEventAsyncOverrides.jsp
MassPriceEventAsyncOverrides.jsp: application/x-not-regular-file

Changing the component to core as it seems that the issue comes from file name encoding and not the tfs plugin. Or could it be a master-slave issue?

In my case there is no slave involved, it happens on the sole Hudson instance, which is in a local ext3 file system, so no NFS or other network mount is at play.

I can see a bit different stack trace on Jenkins ver. 1.505

Mar 17, 2013 2:06:39 PM hudson.model.Run execute
SEVERE: Failed to save build record
java.io.IOException: Unable to delete /home/ci/mst/jobs/Infrastructure_free_space_monitoring/configurations/axis-label/ingot/builds/2013-03-17_14-06-01/build.xml
        at hudson.util.AtomicFileWriter.commit(AtomicFileWriter.java:112)
        at hudson.XmlFile.write(XmlFile.java:184)
        at hudson.model.Run.save(Run.java:1702)
        at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1623)
        at hudson.matrix.MatrixRun.run(MatrixRun.java:146)
        at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:88)
        at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:237)

Too little information in the original report and some of the comments to investigate further.

One of the comments seems to essentially duplicate JENKINS-12610.

Due to the age and nature of this issue, I'm resolving this as duplicate. If this is still an issue for you on current Jenkins versions (1.554.x or 1.56x), please file a new issue and provide as much information as you can. If you're on Windows or otherwise locking file systems, disable search indexer, antivirus, and similar processes.