[OT] RE: Being denied my own files!

[Miles Goodhew]

Kyrre,


On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:09:28 +0100, Kyrre Ness Sjobak
<kyrre at solution-forge.net> wrote:
> Strange. I have experienced several times to delete something root-owned
> (in my home folder) from nautilus -> get thrown to ~/.Trash. (or
> media/trash, but removable media is usually vfat so permissions isn't an
> issue)
> 
> When i then try to empty trash, all i get is "acess denied".

  If you own a directory, or if you have write permission to it, you
can modify all links (file names) within it. If root owns any "normal"
file in the dir, you can delete them immediately (rather, "unlink"
them - only the system can delete).
  However, you can't unlink a directory file (yes, at the inode level,
everything's a file with a specific type) unless the directory only
contains the two links/names "." and ".." ("self inode" and "parent
inode").
  So it follows from the preceding two paragraphs that if root owns a
directory in your home directory (and you can't write to that
directory), then you can move it to some other directory (say
"~/.trashcan" or something similar), but you can never actually
crowbar it out of the filesystem.

  In that final case (and if you don't actually have root access to
the box you're using), I usually move the directory as far up the
filesystem as I can (put it in "/tmp" if it's the same filesystem),
rename it to something like "FOR_CLIFFS_SAKE_DELETE_ME" and then
possibly send the owner an email requesting it be expunged).

Moles.

-- 
Miles Goodhew, Senior Hacker
TransACT communications