problem with deleting a directory and subdirectory

Question

root@Umar:/home/umar# rmdir /usr/local/Reliance_Netconnect
rmdir: failed to remove ‘/usr/local/Reliance_Netconnect’: Directory not empty

possible duplicate of How to delete a non-empty directory in Terminal? — amc, Sep 03 '14 at 04:25

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 03 '14 at 04:00

2

To delete a directory that is not empty, you need to use rm -rf.

This is basic linux, and so is using sudo instead of a root account; you're setting yourself up for disaster. Be careful.

answered Sep 03 '14 at 04:00

Marty Fried

you don't need to use -f and might be a bad suggestion for someone who appears to not know what they're doing. also, sudo is not necessarily "basic Linux." there's still a camp that believes it makes more sense to use the root account. it is basic Debian/Ubuntu/etc. – wxl Sep 03 '14 at 05:33

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 03 '14 at 03:59

1

You must have an empty directory for rmdir to work.

The typical way to recursively delete a directory and all of it's contents is with the rm -r command where the -r is short for recursive.

answered Sep 03 '14 at 03:59

wxl

2 Answers2