Re: unremovable directory

[Tobias Niemann <tobias@tobias-niemann.de>]

Florian Kulzer said the following on 10.10.2006 10:00:
> On Tue, Oct 10, 2006 at 00:19:35 +0200, Tobias Niemann wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> If I perform as root
>>
>> # ls -lad /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
>> dr-xrwsrwx 2 17996 34912 49152 1970-01-03 07:36
>> /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
>>
>> (weired user, group, permissions, size and date)
>> and then
>>
>> # rmdir /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
>> rmdir: /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth: Operation not permitted
>>
>> how's about a chown?
>>
>> # chown -R root. /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
>> chown: changing ownership of
>> `/var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth': Operation not permitted
> 
> [...]
> 
>> I guess you get the idea, I'm not allowed to perform any operation on
>> that directory. An "fsck.ext3 -f .." did complete without errors but I
>> guess it's a relict of my last crash about two weeks ago (my CPU was the
>> reason not the OS). I also wasn't able to delete the directory from
>> within knoppix.
>>
>> I'm very much clueless, any help is appreciated. How can I get rid of
>> the directory?
> 
> Is this an ext2/3 filesystem? In that case your problem might be due to
> the "immutable" or "undeletable" attribute being set. You can check this
> with "lsattr" and change it with "chattr". Both utilities are in the
> package "e2fsprogs". I had a similar problem once after a minor
> filesystem corruption, so you might also want to check the health of
> your hard disk with "smartmontools".


Never heard of those attributes before, thanks for the tip. Yes, it is
an ext3 filesystem. This is what lsattr showed:

# lsattr -d /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
----i--Ac-Z-E---- /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth

Obviously there was the immutable flag set so I performed a

# chattr -i /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth

to get rid of that flag and to get

# lsattr -d /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
-------Ac-Z-E---- /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth

and therefore to be able to

# rmdir /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth

with the result

# ls -la /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth
ls: /var/lib/python-support/python2.3/pygtk.pth: No such file or directory

Always sweet to learn something new, even if it is in a situation like
this one. Thanks a lot!