Undeletable files

[Justin Piszcz]

On Thu, 23 Oct 2008, Roland Bock wrote:

> Hi,
>
> an e2fsck-run left a few files sprinkled over the file system which seem to 
> be undeletable. Although the FS is mounted RW, even root does not seem to be 
> able to delete them.
>

[ .. ]

> For example:
> #: rm 20011112_0000_AAM_TUI_000.txt
> rm: cannot remove `20011112_0000_AAM_TUI_000.txt': Operation not permitted
>
> #: chown root:root 20051109_0000_AAM_TUI_000.txt
> chown: changing ownership of `20051109_0000_AAM_TUI_000.txt': Operation not 
> permitted
>
> #: chmod a+w 20061221_0000_AAM_TUI_001.txt
> chmod: changing permissions of `20061221_0000_AAM_TUI_001.txt': Operation not 
> permitted
>
>
> Any idea of how to get rid of these files? I have about a 100 million files 
> on that file system. "About" 30.000 are in such a state as described above. 
> The rest behaves normally (can be modified, deleted, etc).

Either the FS is damaged or the files are chattr'd +i, lsattr -l filename.

Are they immutable by chance?

Justin.