rm command not working for me.

[Jonas thomas]

I ran a java uninstaller to remove opencascade but it didn't get every thing.. So I'm going in a blowing away whats left but for some reason there are some things that just wont go....

For example:

jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial/src$ ls -a
.  ..
jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial/src$ cd ..
jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial$ ls
src
jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial$ rm src
rm: cannot remove `src': Permission denied
jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial$ sudo rm src
rm: cannot remove `src': Is a directory
jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial$ ls -l
total 4
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 2008-08-06 07:22 src
jonas@Ubuntu4:/opt/OpenCASCADE6.2.0/samples/tutorial$

Here's what got me confused. I get and error message saying that rm can't remove a directory, but the man pages say they can. I pretty sure that the directory is empty (ls -a) right??? I looked at the permission (ls -l) and it looks like nothing special. I tried "sudo rm src" and that doesn't work. Am I missing something very obvious here???

[tuxxy]

Try adding a sudo to the start of the command to give tyou admin privs for the command.

sudo rm (file)

[PmDematagoda]

You are running rm on a directory, in which case you would need(since it is empty):-

sudo rmdir name-of-dir

However if the directory in question contains files, then the command would be:-

sudo rm -r name-of-dir

[Jonas thomas]

I tried that, (see the code box) it didn't work.

[hyper_ch]

for a directory you need to use the -R option

[Dr Small]

Try adding a sudo to the start of the command to give tyou admin privs for the command.

sudo rm (file)

And if it is a directory, use:

sudo rm -R directory

[markjensen]

Some of those are directories, so you might want to look into a recursive rm, and this is where you are going to need to be careful!

Combining the sudo root powers, with recursive removal will do just that. Even if you type something in wrong. It can remove... well... everything.

What, exactly, are you trying to remove. Can you post the rm command you tried?

The sudo rm -rf /path/to/directory command will do a wonderful and irreversible job.

[t0p]

The command 'rmdir' is used to delete empty directories. To delete directories that contain files, use 'rm -r'.

[tuxxy]

Be careful when using rm -rf double check you have the correct paths before executing

[Jonas thomas]

Got it. Thanks all.