FTP.delete(filename) from ftplib error

Question

When I try to use ftp.delete() from ftplib, it raises error_perm, resp:

>>> from ftplib import FTP
>>> ftp = FTP("192.168.0.22")
>>> ftp.login("user", "password")
'230 Login successful.'
>>> ftp.cwd("/Public/test/hello/will_i_be_deleted/")
'250 Directory successfully changed.'
>>> ftp.delete("/Public/test/hello/will_i_be_deleted/")
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/ftplib.py", line 520, in delete
resp = self.sendcmd('DELE ' + filename)
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/ftplib.py", line 243, in sendcmd
return self.getresp()
File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/ftplib.py", line 218, in getresp
raise error_perm, resp
ftplib.error_perm: 550 Delete operation failed.

The directory exists, and "user" has sufficient permissions to delete the folder.

The site is actually a NAS (WD MyBookWorld) that supports ftp.

Changing to parent directory and using command ftp.delete("will_i_be_deleted") does not work either.

"will_i_be_deleted" is an empty directory.

ftp settings for WD MyBookWorld:

Service - Enable; Enable Anonymous - No; Port (Default 21) - Default

What about changing to parent directory but still using absolute path to dir_to_be_deleted? — Jonathan Leonard, May 18 '12 at 05:43
I get the same errors when the directory is exchanged with a text file. — jameh, May 18 '12 at 05:47
Do you have access to the server's logs? Can you try the same with a regular FTP client? This looks more like a server-side issue than a problem with ftplib. — jd., May 18 '12 at 05:51
does the ftp user have enough permissions to delete the file ? If you create another directory with that user does it have the same permissions as the one you are trying to delete ? — lxx, Aug 22 '15 at 12:29

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 07 '21 at 12:03

My solution to fix this ftplib.error_perm: 550 issue is to cwd to root directory of FTP server, and delete files by their full path as below.

ftp.cwd(‘.’）

directory = '/Public/test/hello/will_i_be_deleted/'    

# delete files in dir
files = list(ftp.nlst(directory))
for f in files:
    if f[-3:] == "/.." or f[-2:] == '/.': continue
    ftp.delete(f)

# delete this dir
ftp.rmd(directory)

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 18 '12 at 07:41

2

You need to use the rmd command, i.e

ftp.rmd("/Public/test/hello/will_i_be_deleted/")

rmd is for removing directories, deleteis for removing files.

answered May 18 '12 at 07:41

mhawke

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`>>> from ftplib import FTP >>> ftp = FTP("192.168.0.22") >>> ftp.login("admin", "alisary") '230 Login successful.' >>> ftp.cwd("/Public/test/hello/") '250 Directory successfully changed.' >>> ftp.rmd("/Public/test/hello/will_i_be_deleted/")` results in `ftplib.error_perm: 550 Remove directory operation failed` – jameh May 18 '12 at 15:56
I also get the error when ftp.delete is performed on a .txt file – jameh May 18 '12 at 16:25
The FTP debug messages might provide some clues, i.e. `ftp.debug(2)` – mhawke May 20 '12 at 23:55

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 19 '12 at 01:01

The only method that works for me is that I can rename with the ftp.rename() command:

e.g.

ftp.mkd("/Public/Trash/")
ftp.rename("/Public/test/hello/will_i_be_deleted","/Public/Trash/will_i_be_deleted")

and then to manually delete the contents of Trash from time to time.

I do not know if this is an exclusive problem for the WD MyBookWorld ftp capabilities or not, but at least I got a workaround.

FTP.delete(filename) from ftplib error

3 Answers3