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I copied some files from a data DVD to /home/emma (ext4), and all of the files are read only.

This is what all of the files are like:

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ stat cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

  File: ‘cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf’

  Size: 28120       Blocks: 56         IO Block: 4096   regular file

Device: 801h/2049d  Inode: 656521      Links: 1

Access: (0400/-r--------)  Uid: ( 1000/    emma)   Gid: ( 1000/    emma)

Access: 2014-01-17 05:34:46.000000000 +0000

Modify: 2014-01-17 05:34:46.000000000 +0000

Change: 2015-02-01 23:11:04.226865424 +0000

 Birth: -

When I try to delete them, I get rm: cannot remove ‘cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf’: Permission denied, even though I'm the owner. Changing the mode to 777 doesn't work either. The only thing that works is deleting them as root, using sudo.

I thought only an i attribute made files unable to be deleted by their owner, so what's going on?

I'm using Xubuntu 14.10.

Results of various commands:

(Please note: I created directory cd myself, and then copied directory Drivers to it from the DVD.)

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ ls -dlh cd

drwxrwxr-x 3 emma emma 4.0K Feb  3 01:44 cd



emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ ls -dlh cd/Drivers

dr-x------ 11 emma emma 4.0K Feb  3 02:15 cd/Drivers



emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ ls -l cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

-r-------- 1 emma emma 28120 Jan 17  2014 cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ rm cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

rm: cannot remove ‘cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf’: Permission denied



emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ chmod 660 cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ ls -l cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

-rw-rw---- 1 emma emma 28120 Jan 17  2014 cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ rm cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

rm: cannot remove ‘cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf’: Permission denied



emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ chmod 777 cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ ls -l cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

-rwxrwxrwx 1 emma emma 28120 Jan 17  2014 cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ rm cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

rm: cannot remove ‘cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf’: Permission denied



emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ lsattr cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf

-------------e-- cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf



emma@emma-W54-55SU1-SUW:~$ ls -alh cd/Drivers

total 48K

dr-x------ 11 emma emma 4.0K Feb  3 02:15 .

drwxrwxr-x  3 emma emma 4.0K Feb  3 01:44 ..

dr-x------  7 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 01Chipset

dr-x------  3 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 02Video

dr-x------  9 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 03Lan

dr-x------  9 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 04CReader

dr-x------  3 emma emma 4.0K Jan 17  2014 05Touchpad

dr-x------  3 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 06Airplane

dr-x------  2 emma emma 4.0K Jan 17  2014 07Hotkey

dr-x------ 12 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 08IME

dr-x------  7 emma emma 4.0K Jan 14  2014 09Audio

-r--------  1 emma emma  162 Feb 24  2012 ~$ivers_List.rtf

(I've already deleted cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf using sudo as a test.)

I believe some additional information is necessary for a certain answer, but I would suspect the issue is simply permissions related. I'm guessing either you accidentally copied symlinks over instead of the real files, or you're trying to delete the entire directory but haven't reset permissions on all the files within.

First things first, when you stat the file it gives a path of 'cd/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf', which seems to be different than the directory you're referencing in your commands. Can you confirm that you copied the files instead of creating symlinks? Providing the results of these three commands would be very useful in seeing what's going on:

• ls -alhd /home/emma/cd


• ls -alhd /home/emma/Drivers


• ls -alh /home/emma/Drivers

Second, please attempt the following to see if you can remove a single file from the collection:

• chmod 660 "/home/emma/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf"


• rm "/home/emma/Drivers/Drivers_List.rtf"

Let us know how that goes, and provide any errors you receive!

As you're working on a ext4 filesystem it could be possible that those files have the inmutable attribute enabled. You should check it with lsattr. Ex:

antonio@PC1:~/antonio/borrar$ lsattr undelete 

-u--i--------e-- undelete

Try doing:

sudo rm path/to/file

if you cant do that then try

sudo rm -r path/to/file

I've found the answer myself here.

Because cd/Drivers is read-only, only root can delete from it.

I was about to answer with the issue being you're trying to remove a read-only file inside of a directory you have write permissions on.

Try resetting the permissions on the folder recursively with chmod -R 700 /home/emma/cd

It'll be from when you copied preserving permissions inside of MC.