550 Operation not permitted when deleting file through FTP – But I have permissions

filezillaftppermissionswebserver

I am deleting a Drupal installation from a server I just got access to.
Most of the files deleted just fine, but for some of the files, FileZilla gives

550 Operation not permitted

Initially I thought maybe root is owner of these files or something like that, but It turns out that I can chmod them to 777 through FileZilla, but still not delete them.

So, I can chmod the files, but not delete them through FileZilla. I don't have shell access, and there is nothing like cPanel. Furthermore I can't find any information about the OS or anything. It's a weird host.

Any ideas as to what may be wrong here?

Here's the log when trying to delete one of the files:

Status: Connection established, waiting for welcome message...
Status: Insecure server, it does not support FTP over TLS.
Status: Server does not support non-ASCII characters.
Status: Connected
Status: Deleting "/sites/default/default.settings.php"
Command:    CWD /sites/default
Response:   250 CWD command successful
Command:    DELE default.settings.php
Response:   550 default.settings.php: Operation not permitted

Best Answer

To delete a file, you need to have write permissions to the parent directory, not to the file itself.

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