I am in the process of migrating a machine from RHEL 4 to 5. Rather than actually do an upgrade we have created a new VM (both machines are in a cloud) and I am in the process of copying across data between the two.

I have come across the following file, which I need to remove from the new machine but am unable to, even when running as root:

-rw-------  1 2003 2003  219 jan 11 14:22 .bash_history

This file is inside /home/USER/, where USER is the account of the guy who built the machine. He doesn't have an account on the old machine, so I am trying to remove his home folder so that the new machine tallies with the old one, but I get the following error:

rm: ne peut enlever `.bash_history': Opération non permise

(translated from the French: cannot remove XXX, operation not permitted)

I have tried using the following command but this has made no difference:

chattr -i .bash_history

Is the only choice to create a user with the ID 2003, or is there another way around it?

Edit

I have tried using rm -f, and I get the same error. I get the same kind of error using chmod 777 first.

I have been able to chown the folder that contains the file I am trying to delete, so it is:

drwx------ 2 root root 1024 jan 24 15:58 USER

Edit2

Running the lsattr command as suggested by Angus gave the following output:

-----a------- USER/.bash_history
------------- USER/..
------------- USER/.

The file is flagged as append-only – on changing this flag using chattr -a .bash_history I was able to delete the file.