Why do I get permission denied even as root?

There is a directory 'dir1' owned by root:root. Stat shows:

Access: (0750/drwxr-x---) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)

and when I log in as root my id shows:

uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

however when I try to cd into that directory I get:

-bash: cd: dir1/: Permission denied

any ideas why this might be happening and how to remedy it?

3 Answers

Maybe it's SELinux?

Try check with

ls -ladZ dir1

or try to disable SELinux temporary

setenforce 0
# To emable "setenforce 1"

Is the directory in question hosted on NFS? If so, you might find that root:root is mapped to a safer user (e.g. nobody:guest) on the server.

If you have access to the server, and want remote users to have root privilege, you'll want to add the no_root_squash option to the relevant export in /etc/exports. I strongly urge you to read the documentation before doing so.

The directory does not have execute permission, which controls listing its content and entering it. First chmod +x and then cd into it.

Another possibility could be use of ACL. It can sometimes produce weird errors. Try cat /etc/fstab | grep acl and if it is there, try getfacl dir1.