[SOLVED] "Operation not permitted" rm -rf Files from portable harddrive

schach42 · 05-28-2011, 07:35 PM

I mounted a drive to back up some data, but first wanted to delete the data that is current on the drive.

Code:

# mount /dev/sdb1 mountpoint/
# cd sansa
# rm -rf file
rm: cannot remove 'file': Operation not permitted
# cp ../file2 .
cp: cannot create regular file `file2': Permission denied
# ls -l
drwx------ 1 root root        4096 [date] file
# ls -l ..
drwx------  1 root root    8192 [date] mountpoint

So I should have permissions to do this as root, but can't. It's a western digital "My Passport" drive. I've had it for about a year but haven't used it in months. Any thoughts?

Thanks for reading/responding.

AlucardZero · 05-28-2011, 07:59 PM

Looks like it's mounted read-only. What's in /proc/mounts? Try mounting it read-write

mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdb1 mountpoint/

schach42 · 05-28-2011, 08:29 PM

Code:

# cat /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
/dev/root / ext4 rw,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
devtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=507524k,nr_inodes=126881,mode=755 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,relatime 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,relatime,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,relatime 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /home/user/sansa ntfs rw,relatime,uid=0,gid=0,fmask=0177,dmask=077,nls=utf8,errors=continue,mft_zone_multiplier=1 0 0

The folder directory is called "sansa," as you can see. Also, mounting with -o rw didn't work. Any thoughts from /proc/mounts?

AlucardZero · 05-28-2011, 10:48 PM

Oh, so it's NTFS. Which Linux is this, Slackware 13.1?

Anything in the syslog or the tail of `dmesg` about the partition?

schach42 · 05-28-2011, 11:21 PM

Yes, Slackware 13.1

Code:

# dmesg
NTFS volume version 3.1.
usb 1-6: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 1-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-6: New USB device found, idVendor=1058, idProduct=070a
usb 1-6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-6: Product: My Passport 070A
usb 1-6: Manufacturer: Western Digital
usb 1-6: SerialNumber: 575845314132303631353037
scsi9 : usb-storage 1-6:1.0
scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       My Passport 070A 1032 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
scsi 9:0:0:1: CD-ROM            WD       Virtual CD 070A  1032 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 51x/51x caddy
sr 9:0:0:1: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
sr 9:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 5
scsi 9:0:0:2: Enclosure         WD       SES Device       1032 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
ses 9:0:0:2: Attached Enclosure device
ses 9:0:0:2: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 13
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] 975400960 512-byte logical blocks: (499 GB/465 GiB)
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 10 00
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

So as NTFS (I'm surprised I missed that--I know NTFS seemed oddly familiar, but it's been years since I seriously used Linux and I forget so much) would I have to reformat it and then partition it with a new compatible filesystem? However, I managed to write the data to the drive while on a Linux system (It may have been Ubuntu, and I forget which release, in preparation to change to Slackware 13.1), so I don't think that should be necessary.

honeybadger · 05-29-2011, 04:55 AM

Since you say that the drive has not been used for months I would suggest doing a file system check 'fsck -y -a /dev/sdb1'.
Also check the attributes of the files with 'lsattr <filename>'.
These are the two things I can think of currently that would make the external drive behave this way.
Hope this helps.

NM04 · 05-29-2011, 05:07 AM

I dont know much about slackware, but can you tell me why can't you switch to root user ? As i can understand its just the matter of permission (in your first post its showing only root privileged access).

AlucardZero · 05-29-2011, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SilverBack

Since you say that the drive has not been used for months I would suggest doing a file system check 'fsck -y -a /dev/sdb1'.

Errr, fscking an NTFS partition from Linux???? Unless that's changed recently.. bad idea.

Booting Windows and running chkdsk on the partition might help, though.

I'm not familiar with Slackware, but 13.1 sounds relatively recent. Make sure your system is up to date.. and try googling "slackware ntfs" for tips; maybe you need to install a different package to better support NTFS.

@NM04 he's denied even as root.

schach42 · 05-29-2011, 09:42 AM

I got it working. Here's what I did:

Installed FUSE: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/
Installed ntfs-3g: http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/

And then used the command

Code:

# ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 mountpoint

And it works fine. Thank you.

And why would fscking a NTFS partition be a bad idea?

AlucardZero · 05-29-2011, 10:40 AM

Windows should be used to fsck an NTFS partition. Historically, Linux has not supported NTFS well (this has changed in the past few years) and has not been able to fsck ntfs partitions. Seems there is some support for it now in the ntfsfix program tho.

honeybadger · 05-29-2011, 02:10 PM

Well I have a ntfs formatted pen drive and so far things are ok. Never needed to run a fsck on it AFAIK. Well, I guess I would need to go back to vfat

.