Question

I copyd a directory from a working copy, but found .svn directory in my copyd directory. I want to delete the .svn directory, I tried rm -fr .svn, but say Operation not permitted.
So, how to delete those .svn directory? thank you

Answer 1

If it says not permitted it means that there is a problem with access rights. If you can, run as root.

Also, SVN keeps a .svn directory in each project directory. so, you’ll have to do something like

sudo find -type d -name "*.svn" | xargs sudo rm -rf

Note: both uses of sudo above are needed only when there are problems with access rights

Why is this related to access rights? See here.

mihai@fomalhault:/tmp$ sudo mkdir test
[sudo] password for mihai: 
mihai@fomalhault:/tmp$ rm -rf test/
rm: cannot remove directory `test': Operation not permitted

Running a strace gives a

unlinkat(AT_FDCWD, "test", AT_REMOVEDIR) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)

and this is what’s reported