Re: unlink()?

On Sat, 2010-06-05 at 18:55 -0400, tedd wrote: > Hi gang: > > Never-mind. > > I didn't change the parent directory permissions to unlink the file -- duh! > > Cheers, > > tedd > > --- I asked: > > Hi gang: > > I use unlink() to delete files on my server by using the statement: > > unlink($filename); > > where $filename is the physical path to the file plus file name, such as: > > $filename = '/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/a-dir/a-text.txt'; > > Now, I can read, write, and even create the file -- so I have the > path and permissions correct. But if I unlink() the file and then > examine the contents of the parent directory afterwards, I find the > file remains -- what's up with that? > > This reminds me of the process of deleting files on your local hard > disk, which basically sets the disk-space allocated to the file as > "available for writing" without actually deleting the file. > > So what am I not understanding here? > > Cheers, > > tedd > > -- > ------- > http://sperling.com �*� > �a���A$��http://ancientstones.com > http://earthstones.com > I was just about to mention this! It's one of the bizarre security loopholes in Linux. If you have write permissions to a directory but not a file within it, you can still delete the file. I believe you can change this behaviour with filesystem security mods, but I've not tried that. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk