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I downloaded a fasttext word vector file from here.

Although I can change the permissions and owner of the file, I am unable to read the flags or content.

Following are the results of some commands:

  1. File permissions (ls -ltra wiki.es.vec) 

    -rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2594302560 May  2  2017 wiki.es.vec

  2. Result of lsattr (lsattr wiki.es.vec) 

    lsattr: Operation not permitted While reading flags on wiki.es.vec

  3. Result of lsattr, when logged in as root (lsattr wiki.es.vec) 

    lsattr: Operation not permitted While reading flags on wiki.es.vec

  4. chattr is also not working (chattr -i wiki.es.vec) 

    chattr: Operation not permitted while reading flags on wiki.es.vec

I have checked the symlinks, there are no links. I have all the rights to my machine. The problem is with large files only (size 2.4 GB, 6.6 GB), if size is less than that, then there is no problem.

Pablo Bianchi
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Arpita Sharma
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1 Answers1

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The problem was due to the anti-virus, either completely uninstall it or provide an exception for these kinds of files.

I researched a lot and found that this may happen due to anti-virus. Linux is already a safe system, it doesn't give permission to any file whether it is malicious or not. If you install anti-virus, the software itself has the permission to all the files, which should not be the case. It even stops root from doing its work.

You can check the various blogs and forums, everybody says that one should NEVER install anti-virus on Linux machine.

Arpita Sharma
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  • You saved my weekend. Thank you so much. – Jo Shepherd May 09 '19 at 13:20
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    What's this mysterious "anti-virus" you refer to? ``man -k virus`` says ``virus: nothing appropriate.`` i.e., there's no such thing. https://SuperUser.com/a/755286/488122 says symlinks give the same error. – Devon Mar 13 '20 at 17:19
  • @devon if you don't have any anti-virus software installed on your machine, the source of your problem is different. – Arpita Sharma Mar 23 '20 at 12:55