Hi. I am currently on Suse 8.1. I was trying to delete a directory
/tmp/courier-imap/authlib/ as root but I get the following errors on the files contained within:

rm: cannot lstat preauthmysql.c : permission denied
rm: canoot lstat ...
rm: cannot lstat ...etc, etc

I've tried removing the files and directory as root and as the user who owns the file to no avail.

I saw a similar post here and followed the directions specified but it did not work.

Anybody have any other suggestions?

Thank You.

Some more background info:
The orginal directory was where I was compiling an imap mail server; I was trying to delete the whole directory by using "rm -r courier-imap" when I started getting the errors.. I had run make as non-root (since the install instructions specified this)

Thanks for the help.

not sure if you tried this but use

rm -rf directory thats how you have to remove the directories its for recursive and force read man rm or rm --help

Zac

castor:/tmp/courier-imap-1.7.0 # rm -rf unicode
rm: cannot remove `unicode/unicode.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/big5.c': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/big5.h': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/iso88591.c': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/iso88592.c': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/iso88593.c': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/iso88594.c': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove `unicode/iso88595.c': Permission denied

The strange thing is I was having the same problem with files in a nother directory in the same parent directory and all of a sudden I was able to delete it.

Any other suggestions??

Thanks.

i've never expierienced this wierd heh

maybe try chmod -R 777 unicode then try to remove it? I don't know thats just a shot in the dark

maybe

man chattr

I'm having a similar problem... even as root I can't edit /etc/fstab ... I can read it but I cannot save over it/delete it/write to it. I tried chattr, and chmod, and neither seemed to work. I realize this is a system file, but how does one make changes to it?

SU in a terminal-vi /etc/fstab-I for insert,make your changes,save your changes.semi-colon enter) then wq(enter) and then your finished.

if you su to root, you should be able to vi /etc/fstab

if not, then boot a linux floppy and mount your / from there, and try to inspect your /etc/fstab like that.

ok i figured out the problem. linux was mounting it as read only, so I just used the rw option at boot time. Anyone know why it would mount it as read only? Thanks for your help, by the way. oh and lachlan... i do know how to use vi