550 Could not delete default.settings.php: Permission denied

Posted by richinnewzealand on March 12, 2008 at 4:12pm

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

Comments

I had same problem - found

Posted by dbarone on March 18, 2008 at 10:09am

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.

Thank you for the answer. I

Posted by mouseclone on April 17, 2008 at 6:38pm

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.

Ah, thanks! I got worried

Posted by WillBrown on June 9, 2008 at 2:59am

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

Thanks

Posted by Elijah Lynn on March 23, 2009 at 7:24am

This helped me too!

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

thanks that helped me, forgot

Posted by Skelly1983 on July 12, 2009 at 6:54pm

thanks that helped me, forgot permisions inherited from parrent folder

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Excellent

Posted by husain.khambaty on February 8, 2011 at 5:40pm

Thanks this one helped me too..

This didn't help me :( Notice

Posted by luchomolina on February 9, 2011 at 2:50am

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?

Thanks

Posted by wkelvinf on February 5, 2012 at 4:14pm

Thanks

So simple...

Posted by JayNL on August 2, 2008 at 1:30am

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 =-

Drupal is like falling in love with a girl after you got to know her, instead of instantly falling in love with her appearance... :)

omg-so simple...

Posted by lsabug on September 26, 2008 at 2:26am

thanks!

Same problem here

Posted by trentmu on April 23, 2009 at 9:52pm

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?

Fixed

Posted by trentmu on April 23, 2009 at 10:06pm

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.

<?php
   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);
?>

Good code.i has the problem

Posted by dkroneb on September 30, 2011 at 4:21pm

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.

I solved this problem

Posted by mesutcan on May 13, 2009 at 12:04am

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 :)

after installation which directory need chmod 777 to 555?

Posted by rommachine on June 17, 2009 at 12:14pm

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

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You solved my problem

Posted by Ebuttzpsu on January 5, 2010 at 3:39am

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!!

REALLY WORKS!

Posted by calmher on June 1, 2010 at 2:50am

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.

It Worked

Posted by dharrris on January 27, 2011 at 5:24am

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

I'm sorry if this is a silly

Posted by luchomolina on February 9, 2011 at 2:57am

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.

Thanx

Posted by Aurochs on March 16, 2010 at 7:59am

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

http://gamepart.ru
http://temerhouse.ru
http://zubril.in

Just changing permissions with FTP should work

Posted by Paul Claessen on May 8, 2011 at 1:42pm

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)!

I thank you!

Posted by radukam on August 5, 2011 at 3:18pm

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! :-)

G. Radu
radukam@yahoo.com