Minimum file permission needed to delete a file in Linux

Question

To delete a file in Linux,

• What minimal permissions do we need to set on it?
• What minimal permissions do we need to set on its parent directory?

Answer 1

You need to have x-permissions and w-permissions on the directory (and of course x-permissions on all parents), that is all.

mkdir foo
touch foo/bar
chmod 300 foo
chmod 000 foo/bar
rm -f foo/bar

But when testing you might stumble into thinking that you need more (e. g. r-permissions for the directory or whatever). This will be only due to false testing ;-)