How to remove files with no permission

Question

I have leftovers of PyLotRO, a Windows emulator, but I can't move all files to the trash bin.

How do I change permissions and delete them?

Answer 1

Determine where the folder is and change the permissions using chmod

sudo chmod -R 777 /path/to/folder/foldername

Then press Enter. For example if the folder was called BLAH and was located at /home/user then you would type

sudo chmod -R 777 /home/user/BLAH 

That should change the permissions for the folder and all its files and sub directories to read/write/execute. Then you should be able to delete them. Also be aware that Linux is case sensitive so you do have to use a capital -R in the line and if your directory has caps you have to use caps the exact same way it show or it will fail

Since you said you can find the folder in terminal you can use this command

sudo rm -rf /path/to/folder/foldername

That will delete the folder and its subdirectories as root.

It will ask you for a password and when you type it in it will look like nothing is happening . It doesn't show any indication that you are typing it in. Just type the password and press Enter and it will delete the files for you.

Answer 2

Having all permissions as a root, you should use:

sudo -i

And for completely removing files or folders and their contents, you can use:

rm

For obtaining more information about these commands (and other commands!) you can use:

man

For example,

man rm

Answer 3

If you wanted to use your GUI file manager (nautilus, thunar, caja, dolphin, etc) you could use the "root account" to delete the files.

Most file managers probably have an "Open Folder as Root" or similar option, or just run the file manager with sudo (, from a terminal would work.

For thunar: sudo thunar. Or for nautilus: sudo nautilus , etc

If you're using nautilus, the answers here should help: How do I open a folder as root?

Then browse to the offending files and delete them.

In a terminal, just sudo rm should work too