i have a folder on my external hdd that i want to delete. according to properties there should not be any problem. instead, i get an error message "couldn't delete folder", without any further reference to a reason. i haven't tried it as root yet, but what could be the problem? i cannot create a folder directly on the hdd either, just subfolders to those already there.

best regards
ungua

Sounds like it could be an ownership issue. From a shell, type in:

ls -l /path/<name of dir>

You should get some lines that resemble:

drwxr-xr-x 2 me users 4096 2007-03-20 09:29 public_html
drwxr-xr-x 6 me users 4096 2007-04-23 20:22 tmp

Where these lines have "me" listed your's should have the username that you are logged in as. If it isn't, as root, you could use the command:

chown <your username> <path to directory>
or
chown billy /mmt/disk/dir01

It does sound like the external drive is mounted as root, or some other user than what you are currently logged in as.



Another possibility could be that there is a user still in that directory. You my have something open, that thinks it's current directory is in there.

thank you for your excellent reply! it seems that i can only delete one folder at a time, weird.

best regards
ungua

In order to delete more than one at a time, assuming they are all in the same sub tree listing, eg delete1>delete2>delete3..., then you have to use the rm -R command. This will delete all the folders and files in that tree. I think this is what you are getting at? Where -R is recursive

So
(su)
rm -R /mnt/point/of/folder/

And that will delete all the folders in that tree

Ryan