unix permissions

The command to do it would be:

rm -rf LATEST

The directory is owned by user colgray.  If that is not the user that you are logged in as, then you would need to be either:

1)  root

or

2)  Logged in as a user in the group "eng" (since the folder is also group writable)  You can type "id" to find out what groups you are in.

that is the user I'm logged in with.  When I try that command I get permission denied

Are you sure there's not stuff inside that directory that doesn't belong to colgray?

Try "ls -lRt LATEST" and see if you see files owned by other users.

It is not the permission of LATEST that matters.  It is the permission of the folder that holds LATEST.  What is the permission of the folder where LATEST is located?


ls -ld ..

@farzanj:
You are of course correct that permissions on the parent folder override, but the author says that "I copied over a directory (LATEST) into a directory that I created on a linux server."  If the author created the folder, and copied the folder LATEST into it, then the author should technically own that parent  directory.

You could try

$ rmdir LATEST

just to see what error message it produces (and tell us).

you must check the permission of parent directory

$ ls -ld .

$ ls -ld . returned drwxrwxr-x  3 userName eng 4096 Nov  1 16:00 dirname
$ rmdir LATEST returned rmdir: `LATEST': Directory not empty

The problem is pointed out by xterm, when I run $ ls -lRt LATEST I get a ton of files and directories, below are some examples

-r--rwxr--  1 colgray eng   7067 Nov  1 16:00 tree.html
dr-xrwxr-x  4 colgray eng  4096 Nov  1 16:00 bin
dr-xrwxr-x  2 colgray eng  4096 Nov  1 16:00 lib

I did a cp -R when copying over, so did it maintain the permissions from the location I copied it from?  Any ideas on how to remove all directories and files under the LATEST directory?

It sounds like the parent directory permissions may have changed after you copied the files?

>  $ ls -ld . returned drwxrwxr-x  3 userName eng 4096 Nov  1 16:00 dirname

So, did you purposely change what shows as "userName" and "dirname" above before posting this?

yes, the actual parent directory that contains the LATEST dir (one I'm trying to delete) is exactly below, ignore that first bullet.


$ ls -ld . yields - drwxrwxr-x  3 colgray eng 4096 Nov  1 16:00 .

Can you please do the commands below and paste the full output here?

pwd
rm -rf LATEST

Select allOpen in new window

$ pwd
/aut/ew/colgray
$ rm -rf LATEST
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/bin/Linux/RefAgent.sh': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/bin/Linux/RefAgent': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/bin/Linux/MgmtApiTest.sh': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/bin/Linux/MgmtApiTest': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/bin/WinXP/RefAgent.exe': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/bin/WinXP/MgmtApiTest.exe': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/include/EnergyWiseApi.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/include/EnergyWise.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/include/EnergyWiseLog.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/include/EnergyWiseSdk.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/include/EnergyWiseUtil.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/include/platform_types.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/CiscoEnergyWiseApi.dll': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/CiscoEnergyWiseSdk.dll': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/libCiscoEnergyWiseApi.so.1.3': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/libCiscoEnergyWiseApi.so.1': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/libCiscoEnergyWiseApi.so': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/libCiscoEnergyWiseSdk.so.1.3': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/libCiscoEnergyWiseSdk.so.1': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `LATEST/toolkit/lib/libCiscoEnergyWiseSdk.so': Permission denied

the permissions on those files look like

-r-xrwxr-x  1 colgray eng    132 Nov  1 16:00 RefAgent.sh

OHUPE's suggestion worked:


-r-xrwxr-x  1 colgray eng    132 Nov  1 16:00 RefAgent.sh

sorry the suggestion was to:

Assuming you are the coldgray user :
First type : chmod -R u+rw LATEST
and then : rm -rf LATEST

Yep, that would do it.  I had a feeling something inside the directory was causing it, but couldn't see it until you pasted that output - and yes, OHUPE's suggestion should do what you need.

xterm, so what is chmod -R u+rw LATEST really doing, blowing away all the permissions that were previously there?