Untouchable File on Linux Server, Even Though Permission == 777

Question

I have a file on my web server that I can't rename, delete, move, edit, anything. I have set the permissions to 777. What else can I do?

EDIT: to clarify - this is on a hosting service to which I do not have shell access. The file is a Drupal installation's settings.php.

SOLUTION: Directory file permissions were inaccurate. Thanks to whomever suggested checking that.

Answer 1

Check extended attributes, if applicable:

# lsattr file
----i-------------- file
# chattr -i file

The 'i' bit is 'immutable', meaning it resists all changes.

Answer 2

What else can I do?

• tell us what OS/distro you are running
• If it is Linux, check if SELinux or Apparmor are running
• If SELinux is running, what is the output of "ls -lZ file"?
• use unlink to delete the file instead of rm
• use ls -i to show the inode of the file and try to remove it by inode number

Use at your own risk.

Answer 3

My guess is that its one of those annoying .pureftp-upload files. Even if it isn't, there are 2 ways I usually deal with these files.

• Use your file manager from within your web hosting control panel (probably CPanel).
• Try using PHP (replace the pureftp-upload filename with your filename):

$f = ".pureftp-upload.23kjfvds9osd890235mn";
unlink($f); 

then surround the above code with <?php at the beginning and ?> at the end (code formatting doesn't play nice with php tags).

Answer 4

If this file is in a folder deemed to be accessible through Apache web service, you may need to stop Apache for a moment then do your changes.

I know IIS in windows has something like this where if the file could possibly be accessed then the user rights don't matter.