# cannot delete don't have permission



## cyoung1601 (Oct 30, 2007)

hi
when i try to delete some files and folders i get the following:
you do not have permission to delete ir or its parent file.

i have changed owners and permissions but it still won't let me move or delete. For example, when i change ownership to root, this is what i get.

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 401 2001-11-19 13:36 MANIFEST.doc

when i change owners to me, i get

-rwxrwxrwx 1 cliff wheel 401 2001-11-19 13:36 MANIFEST.doc.

i have no clue what wheel is. all my other files show users instead of wheels.

i need help deleting these files. won;t even let me move them to trash.


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## DumberDrummer (Oct 27, 2003)

wheel is the group with root permissions (ie, can use sudo and su to root). 

I don't know if suse has sudo or if you just su -, but try deleting them as root, and then create files under your regular account from that point on


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## lensman3 (Oct 19, 2007)

At a command prompt, type in "groups" command. The "groups" command will tell you what group you belong to. OR Look at the file "/etc/group", find your name, and the number will correspond to the number following your login name in the "/etc/passwd" file. The "groups" command is simpler than looking through the "/etc/passwd" and the "/etc/group" file.

To change file owner/groups from the command line do:

1) Make sure you are in the directory you want to change the files for. 2) Become super user using the "su -" command. 3) type in "chown [user.group] <filename> OR "chgrp [group] <filename>" where group is the name of the group that you want to assign the to.

The -R flag on chown and chgrp and chmod is very handy as it recursively will descend through the directories and change the file owner/permissions/groups to the same value especially if you wild card the file name, ie add a asterick for the filenames. The "*" won't see the hidden files, files with a leading dot as the filename, so the "dot" files have to be wild carded with ".*". This will/can change the permissions/owners/group of the "." and ".." files. 

If you screw things up, change the dot file "." permissions to "chmod 777 ." and fix things from there. Don't leave them as 777 (read/write/execute for owner/group/world), but at least any user can fix the files owners/permission that are in that directory.


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