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I have a directory, that I cannot delete with rmdir. I get always a permission denied error. But when list the directory (with ls -l) I get this:

drwxrwxrwx 2 user user 4096 Aug 28 09:34 directory

stat gives me that:

 File: `directory/' Size: 4096 Blocks: 16 IO Block: 32768 directory Device: 12h/18d Inode: 102368771 Links: 2 Access: (0777/drwxrwxrwx) Uid: ( 1000/ user) Gid: ( 1000/ user) Access: 2015-08-31 03:00:20.630000002 +0200 Modify: 2015-08-28 09:34:16.772930001 +0200 Change: 2015-08-31 12:25:04.920000000 +0200

So how delete that directory.

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    What are the permissions of its parent? Commented Aug 31, 2015 at 10:36

3 Answers 3

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If you are trying to delete a directory foo/bar/, the permissions of bar isn't the relevant factor. Removing the name bar from directory foo is a modification of foo. So you need write permissions on foo.

In your case, check the current directory's permissions with ls -ld .

You might find this answer to "why is rm allowed to delete a file under ownership of a different user?" enlightening.

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Inside that dir must be a file without the needed permissions. Try changing the owner recursively to all the dir and then remove it.

$ sudo chown -R user:user dir/ $ rm -rf dir/

From man rm

-r, -R, --recursive remove directories and their contents recursively -f, --force ignore nonexistent files, never prompt
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Another possibility is that the "immutable bit" is set on this directory. You can check it with ls -d <directory>. Permissions set with chattr won't show up on the stat output:

stephan@x230 ~ % stat testdir File: ‘testdir’ Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory Device: 801h/2049d Inode: 13713629 Links: 2 Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 1000/ stephan) Gid: ( 1000/ stephan) Access: 2015-08-31 14:05:49.957299346 +0200 Modify: 2015-08-31 14:05:25.657267292 +0200 Change: 2015-08-31 14:05:42.685289494 +0200 Birth: - stephan@x230 ~ % lsattr -d testdir ----i--------e-- testdir`

You have to be root to remove the immutable bit: chattr -i testdir

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