By richinnewzealand on

Thanks for paying attention to my post. It is my first posting here and please apologize already in advance if this
is the wrong forum to ask for help.

I installed Drupal 6.1 into my shared godaddy hosting account for testing. The installation did not go that smooth,
so I decided to delete the whole folder containing Drupal 6.1.

Nearly all got deleted, except a subfolder called sites with a default folder containing default.settings.php and setting.php. Also, there is
still this files folder present. Deleting the site folder or attempting to delete any files/folders results in "550 Could not delete default.settings.php: Permission denied " message.

I mean, it is not something which will threaten my life, but it irritates me on a grand scale why these unused folders and files are not deletable.

Googled all up with no solution. BTW, I used Core FTP Pro for uploading. Probably won't make any difference, but if it helps, so it be.

Would love to hear your comments and possible solutions regarding this problem.
Thanks already in advance for your help and looking forward to receive some replies to my post.

Regards,

Rich

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

dbarone’s picture

dbarone commented

I had same problem - found out it's caused by sites/default directory not being writeable. Just set writeable permissions on the directory, then you should be able to delete the files within.

mouseclone’s picture

mouseclone commented

Thank you for the answer. I was chmoding the files.

If you do a chmod -R 777 then you can wrx everything in that dir, files and all.

WillBrown’s picture

WillBrown commented

Ah, thanks!
I got worried there for a moment when this happened to me.
Thought I dorked something up.

elijah lynn’s picture

elijah lynn
Location Portland, Oregon
commented

This helped me too!

-----------------------------------------------
The Future is Open!

Skelly1983’s picture

Skelly1983 commented

thanks that helped me, forgot permisions inherited from parrent folder

husain.khambaty’s picture

husain.khambaty commented

Thanks this one helped me too..

luchomolina’s picture

luchomolina commented

This didn't help me :(

Notice how those two files are missing the d on the permissions letters after I tried chmod 7777, and 777 as well, neither helped.

-bash-3.2$ chmod -R 7777 html/sites/default/
-bash-3.2$ ls -al html/sites/default/
total 36
drwsrwsrwt 3 mejorenbici inetuser  4096 Feb  8 11:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 mejorenbici inetuser  4096 Feb  8 18:56 ..
-rwsrwsrwx 1 mejorenbici inetuser 10380 Jan 10 19:23 default.settings.php
drwsrwsrwt 2 mejorenbici inetuser  4096 Feb  8 18:48 files
-rwsrwsrwx 1 mejorenbici inetuser 11354 Feb  7 10:45 settings.php

Thoughts?

wkelvinf’s picture

wkelvinf commented

Thanks

bananashake1997’s picture

bananashake1997 commented

It worked for me

attila_fabian’s picture

attila_fabian commented

I still forget about this. It worked for me too.

JayNL’s picture

JayNL commented

It's THAT simple :) Thank you, I was looking for this. Drupal is just too strange for me. I really tried, but I can't get the hang of it so I wanted to remove it all and the same folder got stuck upon deleting all files. Thank you for this simple solution!
-= JMstudio.nl Web Development =-

lias’s picture

lias commented

thanks!

trentmu’s picture

trentmu commented

I was trying to upgrade my drupal and decided to delete all the files. Everything deleted except 'sites > default > files' and it won't let me CHMOD to 777 or anything.

'550 SITE CHMOD command failed.'

or when I try to delete...

'550 Delete operation failed.'

Any ideas?

trentmu’s picture

trentmu commented

This other posting helped...http://drupal.org/node/231401

I don't understand how a php script has more power than a command line delete or FTP, but it worked. I modified the one instance of foldername to be the folder I want to delete, then saved as a .php file just outside of that folder, than went to that URL to activate the script. Then I could delete via FTP.

   function rchmod($parent, $dmod, $fmod) {
         if (is_dir($parent)) {
                 $old = umask(0000);
                 chmod($parent, $dmod);
                 umask($old);
                 if ($handle = opendir($parent)) {
                         while (($file = readdir($handle)) !== false) {
                           if ($file === "." or $file === "..") {
                                         continue;
                                 } elseif (is_dir($parent . '/' . $file)) {
                     rchmod($parent . '/' . $file, $dmod, $fmod);
                                 } else {
                                         $old = umask(0000);
                                         chmod($parent . '/' . $file, $fmod);
                                     umask($old);
                                 }
                         }
                         closedir($handle);
            }
         } else {
                 $old = umask(0000);
                 chmod($parent, $fmod);
                 umask($old);
         }
    }
    rchmod('foldername/', 0777, 0666);
dkroneb’s picture

dkroneb commented

Good code.
I had the problem of deleting by FTP, changing the permission didn't help and in the cpanel denied permission.
but I did the delete code of trentmu and i worked.

mesutcan’s picture

mesutcan commented

The same problem happened to me and I solved this by using a feature of cPanel. In cPanel there is a feature called "Legacy File Manager" in Files section. If you enter to that you can delete all the folders that you want permanently.Have a nice day :)

rommachine’s picture

rommachine commented

After installation will i need to chmod 777 to 555 directories & which one?

Ebuttzpsu’s picture

Ebuttzpsu commented

It worked!! Nothing else worked for me, but mesutcan's solution did the trick. I'm glad you figured it out for me because it was really bothering me. Thanks!!

calmher’s picture

calmher commented

This is the only one that worked for me. I've tried 'chmod' on the command line, the php script way, and it still couldn't be deleted! That "Legacy File Manager" did the trick :)

Thanks for posting this.

dharrris’s picture

dharrris commented

I couldn't delete the files either. But, after reading your post, it worked!!!

luchomolina’s picture

luchomolina commented

I'm sorry if this is a silly questions but... what is cPanel and how do I get to it? I'm on an Economy Linux hosting plan in Godaddy. Please help.

kamrulislam’s picture

kamrulislam commented

I was stuck ...really stuck...but its worked....its a solution. thank you...

Aurochs’s picture

Aurochs commented

Thank you, guys, the php script way helpmed me a lot
I had a js - file in language folder undeletable...

Gamepart, Krambol

Paul Claessen’s picture

Paul Claessen commented

From reading some of the comments above, I think a lot of people missed that not only do they have to change the permissions of the file(s) they can't delete (settings.php, default.settings.php) to 777 (or at least write enable), which they can do from FTP (no script needed), but they ALSO need to do that to the directory those files are in (just go up one level)!

flotsam’s picture

flotsam commented

if this issue arises, this is the simple solution right here.

radukam’s picture

radukam commented

I found that if the rate on file atributes value is 777, will be able to delete files without any problems!
I hope this to be useful! :-)

wasifgc’s picture

wasifgc commented

I can not delete my files from server.also i can not change the permission from 0000 to 755 or 644.
i am using accerated cpanel and server is Linux based.i am facing this prob just only one folder. i can change the permission of the other folders.please help me..thanks