Re: File Deletion issue

[Samuel Flory]

Russell Johns wrote:

H-

forgive my ignorance, but I'm not understanding whats going wrong here
...
essentially a large file that I own I can't delete...
why do I not have permission to delete this file???

To delete a file you need write permission in the directory. Write permission to a file simply allows you to modify a file. Also if this directory has the sticky bit set you will need to own the file to delete it.

[sflory@sflory sflory]$ cd test
[sflory@sflory test]$ cat >1
hello
[sflory@sflory test]$ cat 1
hello
[sflory@sflory test]$ chmod 555 .
[sflory@sflory test]$ rm 1
rm: cannot remove `1': Permission denied
[sflory@sflory test]$ cat 1
hello
[sflory@sflory test]$ cat >1
bye
[sflory@sflory test]$ cat 1
bye
[sflory@sflory test]$ chmod 755 .
[sflory@sflory test]$ rm 1

[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ rm rcj.iso
rm: cannot remove `rcj.iso': Permission denied
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ chmod 777 rcj.iso
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ rm rcj.iso
rm: cannot remove `rcj.iso': Permission denied
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ ls -l
total 423972
-rwxrwxrwx 1 rcj xcdroast 433717248 Oct 21 10:39 rcj.iso
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ chown rcj.rcj rcj.iso
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ rm rcj.iso
rm: cannot remove `rcj.iso': Permission denied
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$ rm -f rcj.iso
rm: cannot remove `rcj.iso': Permission denied
[rcj@Merak2 Archive]$