From: Andrew Lutomirski Subject: How do I clear the append-only flag on symlinks? Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:07:51 -0700 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 To: linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mail-gy0-f174.google.com ([209.85.160.174]:60826 "EHLO mail-gy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753811Ab1JUSIM (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:08:12 -0400 Received: by gyb13 with SMTP id 13so4097303gyb.19 for ; Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:08:11 -0700 (PDT) Sender: linux-ext4-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: By means that are best not admitted to, I managed to mark a large chunk of my filesystem append-only, including symlinks. I cleared the flag from all the normal files and directories, but chattr and lsattr don't want to operate on symlinks. They say things like: $ sudo lsattr /boot/vmlinuz lsattr: Operation not supported While reading flags on /boot/vmlinuz and I can't delete them, because $ sudo rm /boot/vmlinuz rm: cannot remove `/boot/vmlinuz': Operation not permitted Any ideas on how to clear the append-only flags? debug2fs is a little scary, and hacking e2fsprogs to allow operation on symlinks seems to affect symlink targets and not the symlinks themselves. --Andy