Linked Questions

8 votes
5 answers
19k views

logic behind deleting files where user does not have right to write [duplicate]

When I create a file with no write permissions in my home directory: $ umask 777; touch testfile $ ls -ln testfile ---------- 1 1000 1000 0 2014-03-21 16:52 testfile $ ..then I'm still easily able ...
Martin's user avatar
  • 7,506
22 votes
1 answer
66k views

Minimum file permissions to delete a file [duplicate]

To delete a file in Linux: What minimal permissions do we need to set on it? What minimal permissions do we need to set on its parent directory?
parmar7725274's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
4k views

why am I able to delete file which belongs to `root` under a non-root user? [duplicate]

I create a file under my user esolve and then su root and use chown to change its user to root then I returned to user esolve I notice I can still delete the file with rm why?
misteryes's user avatar
  • 1,323
2 votes
1 answer
2k views

Able to delete file without permission [duplicate]

I've been experimenting with file permissions and ownership lately, and I tried this: touch a sudo chown root:root a sudo chmod 000 a I can't read, write, or execute the file, but I can still delete ...
tkbx's user avatar
  • 10.8k
0 votes
1 answer
541 views

Why can't i delete file when i have the file's ownership? [duplicate]

As a root user, I created a file in / directory. I can only read this file when logged in as normal user (say A) as expected.I changed the ownership to A.Now A can read as well as write.But when I try ...
Lavanya Nidhi's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
1k views

how does the cp - f work in Unix? [duplicate]

I was reading about the cp command in unix and one of the options is: cp -f : force copy by removing the destination file if needed so I wanted to test this to see how it works, I did the following: ...
Colin Jack's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
565 views

Can a user without u-permissions, read, change permission and the delete the file and why? [duplicate]

So I made a file and gave it the following permissions. chmod u-rwx, g=rw, o=rx file The user can't read the file now, because he doesn't have any read permissions, right? I could remove the file, ...
PinkDraconian's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
40 views

Deleting read-only directory on linux? [duplicate]

I created an empty read-only directory: mkdir -m 400 ~/Desktop/hello As per the octal permission, it indicates the directory has read only permission. But contrast to that when I am using the ...
Phaneendra's user avatar
53 votes
3 answers
21k views

Why is rm allowed to delete a file under ownership of a different user?

From the post Why can rm remove read-only files? I understand that rm just needs write permission on directory to remove the file. But I find it hard to digest the behaviour where we can easily delete ...
mtk's user avatar
  • 27.5k
8 votes
1 answer
88k views

Move preserves ownership of source files not allowing writes

Kindly Consider: $ id # Me uid=100(user1) gid=200(group1) groups=200(group1) $ ls -l tnsnames.ora # So user1 has only read permission on below file. -rw-rw-r-- 1 oracle dba 411024 Jul 28 2010 ...
Kent Pawar's user avatar
  • 1,276
14 votes
1 answer
29k views

Cannot delete a file - permission denied - why?

[db2inst1][testing ~/sqllib/db2dump] rm db2diag.log rm: cannot remove `db2diag.log': Permission denied [db2inst1][testing ~/sqllib/db2dump] id uid=1002(db2inst1) gid=107(db2iadm1) groups=16(dialout),...
Radek's user avatar
  • 2,993
2 votes
3 answers
15k views

rm prompt when deleting unwritable files

This is about GNU rm. The info page says: Otherwise, if a file is unwritable, standard input is a terminal, and the -f or --force option is not given, or the -i or --interactive=always option is ...
viuser's user avatar
  • 2,614
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

What does it mean if a directory has only x (executable) permission for certain user/group?

I stumbled across the directory /etc/ssl/private on Ubuntu (12.04), it has following permission: drwx--x--- 2 root ssl-cert 4096 7月 8 2012 private/ I wonder what does this mean for group ssl-...
Pellaeon Lin's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
756 views

Can someone delete my non-empty directory from a write-all directory without having write permissions on it?

I know that deleting a file depends on the permissions I have on the enclosing directory, and not on the file itself, see e.g. here But what about a non-empty directory? Using rm -rf NON_EMPTY_DIR ...
akraf's user avatar
  • 867
1 vote
0 answers
113 views

Prevent specific user from altering file they own through directory traversal in shared folder to which they have no write permissions(scenario)?

Bob is the sysadmin. Alice is a user, and boy is she a mess. Bob has set up a shared folder, say /srv/share, with permissions of 775 and ownership belonging to bob:usershares. Alice is not a part ...
sunshine's user avatar