From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Sep 15 20:50:46 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 40ABE37B400 for ; Sun, 15 Sep 2002 20:50:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pioneernet.net (mail.pioneernet.net [207.115.64.224]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF5C343E65 for ; Sun, 15 Sep 2002 20:50:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chip@wiegand.org) Received: from chip.wiegand.org [66.114.152.128] by pioneernet.net with ESMTP (SMTPD32-6.06) id A4B5860011C; Sun, 15 Sep 2002 20:49:09 -0700 Subject: Re: Help! a directory won't go away even as root -SOLVED From: Chip Wiegand To: Matthew Emmerton Cc: Questions FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <042301c25d11$a658f470$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> References: <1032133467.216.2.camel@chip.wiegand.org> <042301c25d11$a658f470$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.0.5 Date: 15 Sep 2002 20:53:39 -0700 Message-Id: <1032148419.216.8.camel@chip.wiegand.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 2002-09-15 at 16:43, Matthew Emmerton wrote: > > I have a directory that I can't remove. It's empty and looks like this: > > dr-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 Aug 14 12:18 empty > > It's even called empty. Anyway, I can't rm -rf, I can't chmod, when I > > try I get Operation not permitted, while logged on as root. I have to > > get rid of this, I can't create a ln -s because this is messing it up. > > 'ls -alod empty' will most likely show a flag of 'schg'. Do 'chflags noschg > empty' and then you should be able to rm -rf without problems. > > -- > Matt Emmerton Thanks to all who replied so quickly. That was exactly the problem. I've never seen the immutable flag before. Something new to learn about. I had just installed fbsd-4.6.2 and then was in the process of moving /var to /usr/var and linking /usr/var to /var - like this - mkdir /usr/var cd /var tar cf - . | (cd /usr/var; tar xf - ) cd / rm -rf /var ln -s /usr/var /var That's when I couldn't get rid of the directory /var/empty, I have no idea where it came from, if it was there by default, or what. I've done this every time I've installed freebsd and this is a first. Thanks for the tip everyone, -- Chip To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message