I have a directory that seems impossible to delete, but I need to free space as it occupies over 1GB. Using command rm -r it says in the end 'cannot remove...: Permission denied'. Even the command rm -rf doesn't do it. How can I delete such a file or directory?

Need more info - what is the directory and who owns it?

EDIT: know what directory would be nice in case you are trying to delete /proc, /bin, etcetera...

2 members found this post helpful.

are you trying as root ?

info of output and your distro would be handy

but lets guess ?

you tried:

sudo rm -r <dir>

2 members found this post helpful.

Correct as pointed out by sevendogsbsd.

Suggest you perform an "ls -l" of the directory file name to see who owns it, what group it is in, and what the privileges are. Examining that and paying attention to what username you are will help solve this.

And note that if your first reply is "But I'm root", that still can be blocked if the permissions disallow the owner from deleting the directory. Either as root or using sudo you can delete, or modify the permissions and other things like group membership and ownership of the directory to allow it to be deleted. (I forget whether or not the sticky bit has any bearing here, but that also will be shown by the extended listing of the file)

EDIT: And also updated by sevendogbsd. Yeah, .... don't delete system trees. If it's truly some data directory, then use su or sudo, just be cautious.

1 members found this post helpful.

Go to the parent directory of the one you want to remove and issue:
and post the results in a reply.

The permissions are obviously set to prohibit its removal by you.

You would be able to delete the directory and its contents, by either using the 'root' account or giving yourself temporary privileges using 'sudo', but you'll want to be very careful. Questions to ask yourself:

• If you don't own the directory, do you really want to delete it?
• Are the contents of that subdirectory critical data?
• Are you sure there aren't other files that you own that can't be compressed to recover some free space?
• You are aware of the serious damage that can result from the "rm -r" command, right?

HTH...

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All right, I did it now, using sudo before the command. The file or directory was an iso that I mounted. It was in the downloads directory. Thank you.

1 members found this post helpful.

You did unmounted it before removing, didn't you?

I mounted the iso but can't remember what I did afterwards, it was a long time ago. But the resulting file was there in the folder for nothing.