Can't delete a directory whose name contains spaces in FTP

Question

I'm trying to delete a directory whose name contains spaces on a remote server via FTP. I've tried escaping the spaces, quoting the dir name and wildcarding (a la mdelete), but none of these work:

ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
SS7 Stack Overloading
226 Transfer complete
64 bytes received in 0.03 seconds (2.05 Kbytes/s)
ftp> rmdir SS7*
550 SS7*: No such file or directory
ftp> rmdir "SS7 Stack Overloading"
550 SS7 Stack Overloading: No such file or directory
ftp> rmdir 'SS7 Stack Overloading'
550 'SS7: No such file or directory

What FTP server? Try a different client. – CodeCaster Oct 03 '14 at 09:49 — CodeCaster, Oct 03 '14 at 09:49
ProFTPD 1.3.4a Server (ProFTPD) – Cormac Oct 03 '14 at 10:19 — Cormac, Oct 03 '14 at 10:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 03 '14 at 05:06

What happens if you try using:

ftp> quote rmd SS7 Stack Overloading

without using any quotes? Some FTP clients try to interpret arguments to their builtin functions (like "rmdir" or "ls" or "mdelete"); using "quote" bypasses that, and tells the client that you want to use a custom command. Note, however, that unless that "SS7 Stack Overloading" directory is empty, the RMD command will fail; most FTP servers, including proftpd, implement RMD by calling rmdir(2) directly, which will refuse to delete a directory unless it is empty (other than "." and "..", of course).

Hope this helps!

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '15 at 17:09

Go to your directadmin or whatever your admin access is.

Via directadmin (example : www.domain.com:2222) than select files on the right top.

Search the folder or file in the root and click on "Reset owner". After that you'll be able to delete the file via Filezilla.

Can't delete a directory whose name contains spaces in FTP

2 Answers2