Permission denied on " ls "for root user
 

Dear,
i am getting permission denied for some files within my home directory using "ls" command.
Even, when the root(super-user) login is used for the same listing , i am getting a permission denied error message.
can anybody help me in explaining/tracing the above message.
as per my knowledge, the super-user can list all the files in any directory.

early response will be appreciated..

Regards
Vivek J.

Instead of su, try "su -" this seems to work better for me. Thansk

does "su - " affect listing of files for super-user.

I believe that su give you super user privleges and su - makes you the user root. Clear as mud?

try this (w/o quotes): "strace ls <options> <dir or file>" and post the output here.

NO! su is a command that Switches User. you actually become root when you run su, when you run su - all you do is change to root and go to the home path for root (usually /root). you can use the command su for changint to ANY user for example, you are the user john and want to change to user smith, you use the command $su - smith and if then you want to become root you run $su -

PLEASE READ man su !!!

Reread the man page.
just gives you the permissions of the username, without the environment
of that username. No username => switch user to root (uid 0, really)
sets up the environment of the user you have switched to. It matters,
because if you are "frodo" and you "su bilbo", you keep frodo's
environment, which means if bilbo has a different path from frodo, you
won't get what you expect for bilbo. However, if you use "su - bilbo", you
will get the environment of bilbo.
It doesn't matter that much for this question, since
should give the permissions necessary to read almost any files.
How is the home disk/partition mounted? If it's mounted via NFS, root
most likely WON'T have permission to read the files, since that
permission is set by the server. If the disk is local but mounted in a funky
way, you could cause all files, but not just certain files to be unreadable.

anyway, If you don't use su - you wont be able to run a lot of command (since you don't have the env you dont have the path)

Output of strace command
 

here is an output of strace command :

orbit@avior:~/data> strace ls -l secrvr.log

Do you have read and execute privelleges to the directory in which you're trying to look in?

have you red the man pages of strace and ls???

I "red" the man pages and it blue...sorry I could not resist :D

oooooooooops, didn't see that.
 

No problem.