Can someone please explain this behavior?

[stevecrozz]

This is driving me nuts.

httpadmin@mail:~$ ls -l
total 56
drwxr-xr-x   2 root       root   4096 Aug 14 22:11 apache2-default
drwxr-xr-x  65 root       root   4096 Aug 14 22:11 framework
drwxr-xr-x  25 postmaster users  4096 Aug 16 09:37 horde
drwxr-xr-x  26 root       root   4096 Aug 14 22:11 horde.bak
drwxr-xr-x   2 root       root   4096 Aug 14 22:11 images
-rw-r--r--   1 root       root   5258 Aug 14 22:11 index.html
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root       root     21 Aug 15 17:52 phpmyadmin -> /usr/share/phpmyadmin
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root       root     20 Aug 14 22:11 sqwebmail -> /usr/share/sqwebmail
-rwxrwxrwx   1 httpadmin  users 17353 Aug 14 22:11 telegan.jpg
-rw-r--r--   1 root       root   3996 Aug 14 22:11 telegan.png
drwxr-xr-x   2 root       root   4096 Aug 14 22:11 webalizer
httpadmin@mail:~$ rm telegan.jpg
rm: cannot remove `telegan.jpg': Permission denied
httpadmin@mail:~$

My goal is to give the user httpadmin complete control over this entire directory except a few files. I set permissions on an example file: telegan.jpg to 777. and i even changed ownership to the user in question. Still I get permission denied. What am i doing wrong?

[spoon!]

You need write permission on the parent directory to delete something.

[stevecrozz]

my frustration has been ended and im a little wiser.

[Mystic_Slayer]

Strange, cause he has allready read/write access.

[spoon!]

Strange, cause he has allready read/write access.

No, to delete "~/telegan.jpg" he doesn't need any permissions to that file; rather he needs write permission to the directory that contains it (i.e. ~). (You're not modifying the file -- you're just unlinking it in the directory). The output he posted does not show the permissions on ~, but it appears that he did not have write permissions to it.