Help deleting sub dirs

[TundraSoul]

I need to delete some old sub directories along with the files in them. On unix they're all set at 755 but as the admin when I login by FTP I still can't delete them. I get an error operation not permitted. I also tried changing the permissions but still no luck.

So I guess I need to login by Telnet? What specific commands would I use the remove the sub directories?

Thanks.

[Steve Machol]

When logged in as root, you can run this command to delete the contents of a directory and all files and directories under it:

rm -R directoryname

Be very careful with this! You need to make absolutely sure you don't need anything in this directory and that you don't make a typo and remove the wrong one. :eek:

To be extra safe you can use:

rm -iR directoryname

...which will force you to confirm eash deletion.

[TundraSoul]

Using telnet I'm forced to login as admin not root, which I suspect doesn't allow me to delete the files. Login root is not recognized. How do I get root access from remote?

[Martz]

You cannot (or shouldn't) login as root, you login as a user then become a SuperUser using the SU command:


admin@localhost> su
Enter password:
root@localhost> pwd
/home/sites/myvbsite/old/
root@localhost> rm -iR directory_name


Something like that.

[Steve Machol]

Good point Martz! :)

[TundraSoul]

Originally posted by Martz
You cannot (or shouldn't) login as root, you login as a user then become a SuperUser using the SU command:



Something like that.

That worked perfectly, thanks!