Solved Undeletable system files

dnel · Oct 13, 2016

I unpacked base.txz onto a running FreeBSD system and then went to remove it, however because permissions on some files look like this:

Code:

-r-sr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  26320 Sep 29 02:45 login*

Even root cannot delete these files.

What can I do to forcibly delete them?

SirDice · Oct 13, 2016

Use chflags(8) to remove the schg flag. A lot of files of the base OS are protected this way.

Example:
chflags -R noschg /usr/bin

kpa · Oct 13, 2016

To list the flags on any file, let's say on /sbin/init that is protected from deletion:

ls -lo /sbin/init

Code:

% ls -lo /sbin/init
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  schg 1061880 Sep 29 14:23 /sbin/init