Root and non-root user not able to delete the file

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hi!! one strange problem occurred with my RHEL 5 box.
i'm having logs folder with ownership of non-root user. Created some files with root user under logs folder.
here is the scene:

-rw-r----- 1 root root  1048227 Feb 28 12:34 SystemOut_13.02.28_12.34.10.log
-rw-r----- 1 root root   415920 Mar 14 16:41 SystemOut.log
-rw-r----- 1 root root 20902127 Mar  2 22:15 trace_13.03.02_22.25.53.log
-rw-r----- 1 root root  2579956 Mar 14 16:41 trace.log

I'm not able to delete the files with both users.
Below error is coming up

I tried lsattr and chattr, below the output of both:

------------- /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/xyz/logs/server1/

chattr: Read-only file system while setting flags on /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/xyz/logs/server1/

Chown and chmod not able to work. Again Read-only file system error is coming up.
Help needed also want to understand the reasons.

Immediate help will be appreciated.
Thanks.

2

'read only filesystem' means it cannot write to that partition in any way, including things like chmod and chown which alter inodes. If the partition wasn't mounted readonly in the first place, it probably got set read-only because of a disk error -- the kernel will disallow any further writes to the damaged disk. Check your dmesg for disk errors.

3

The files you're trying to modify are located on a filesystem that was mounted read-only. No changes can be made to files on a read-only filesystem. That is what read-only means; no writes allowed.

If you need to change those files, you need to unmount that filesystem and remount it with the read-only attribute unset.

4

Aside form the most common "issues" like a partition being explicitly mounted read-only or a faulty disk array, there's been a widely known bug in RHEL 5 -more specifically in its kernel- where a filesystem might go read-only with no apparent reason.

It has been extensively documented (and fixed) both by RedHat and by VMWare as it mostly affects RHEL servers running under a hypervisor:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=494927
VMware KB: Linux based file systems become read-only

Either upgrade your kernel to a newer version or use the quick and dirty (and temporary) approach of rebooting the machine.

...of course not before trying mount -o remount <your_filesystem>

5

Thanks alot for ur ans .. letme try and i will post the results.

---------- Post updated at 12:12 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:01 AM ----------

[LEFT]one thing more i want to add. that after restarting the system. few more files are being created by both root and non-root automatically. those files are deletable by root.
If the file system is read only. how still these files are being created or i can delete??
Can anyone please tell is it happening due to bug or some other reason stands for it?
[/LEFT]

6

After you reboot the system, the filesystem is no longer in read-only mode so anyone with sufficient privileges is able to write to it. That's why you rebooted in the first place, isn't it? :wink:

7

If your system can boot it almost certainly didn't start read-only. Many things wouldn't work right.

A filesystem may drop into read-only mode after it's mounted, because of disk errors; in the bugs above, it also dropped into read-only mode because of niggling things like a few retries, or corruption inside the kernel itself.