Can't delete a file?

[Xnomad]

I couldn't find an answer to this on these boards last night, but I found an answer to this elsewhere. I thought I would just post it up here to improve the knowledge database for other useless newbies like me.

 

I was messing around with installing DSL (Damn Small Linux) on a USB thumb drive and created a file in a directory in my /mnt/ directory that I couldn't delete even as root.

 

I'm a newbie so I tried going into single user mode and other things but couldn't delete the blasted thing chmod wouldn't let me change to write permissions the permissions were as follows:

 

-r--r--r-- 1 root root

 

The quick answer is to do this, (replace the filename below with the name of the file you can't delete), remember to be logged in as root:

 

lsattr filename

 

If you see an "i" in the attributes listed then that's whats stopping you from deleting the file.

 

so do this

chattr -i filename

 

then delete the file per usual.

 

[moved from Terminal Shell Commands, etc by spinynorman]