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Folks, within Terminal, I am unable to chown, chmod, rm -Rf, or shred -vfuz to a file. I can however "echo xyz > fileName. I can create, delete or alter other files. My objective is to delete the file and its parent directories but it will not vanquish. Background, the drive is a 750G USB from a Mac 10.6 used for backups of iPhoto and therein lies the bigger problem. I am using Ubuntu 12.03 as a file/media/print server on a cute little MSI netBook . Tis not an option to reFormat the drive. Thanks to all and may someone have the answer, please.

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Can you do these things using sudo? – barrydrake May 5 '12 at 13:17
What are both the permissions of file and directory the file resides? – Rinzwind May 5 '12 at 13:19
In desperation, I enabled the root account followed with "su -" and tried all the above as root. No luck. This file just will not go. file permissions are 777 – Monsignor.Leopold May 5 '12 at 13:29
1) What is the format of the drive (and if you run mount, I'm assuming mount shows it as being rw based on your comment about being able to create, delete, etc. other files) 2) Is there anything bizarre about the filename (special characters or what not) 3) Does /var/log/messages give any hints (you're need to be root to read it typically, though you can probably run dmesg to see the main stuff) 4) Are you running SE Linux (which shouldn't matter but just to rule out some bizarre cases) – Foon Jul 31 '12 at 2:41
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1 Answer

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Given that you don't own the files or directories, it is likely that the root user or adm group can. Try to delete the files with sudo rm -rf /directoryname.

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can execute sudo and su – Monsignor.Leopold May 5 '12 at 13:33

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