rm on cygwin, cannot unlink not owner

Question

I need to delete all files/dirs named .svn using rm on cgywin

drwxr-xr-x    6      4096 Oct 26 15:33 .svn

$ rm -d .svn
rm: cannot unlink `.svn': Not owner

DaveParillo · Answer 1 · 2009-10-27 04:52:43Z

up vote 1 down vote

If you are the adminsitrator on your machine, ownership is a concept that shouldn't concern you much.

Do chmod u+w .svn, then try your remove again.

answered Oct 27 '09 at 4:52

	not sure that'll work on cygwin. may need `cacls` (if administrator) to get permissions on the file. – quack quixote Oct 27 '09 at 5:18
	@~quack. Thanks - You may be right - I think there is a dependency with the CYGWIN environment variable (cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-cygwinenv.html) I may have forgotten about. – DaveParillo Oct 27 '09 at 22:56
	The CYGWIN variable needs to include a setting for ntea (NT Extended Attributes). This should be done in the file cygnus.bat. Add the following line in the file: `export CYGWIN=ntea` – DaveParillo Oct 27 '09 at 23:01
	good find, but actually i think you want `ntsec` not `ntea` (same link, further down the page), to get real permissions instead of faked. more here: cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html ... – quack quixote Oct 28 '09 at 4:53
	Good catch. Thank's for keeping me honest! – DaveParillo Oct 28 '09 at 15:10

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