Permission denied for root!?

Question

Hey yall--
Something very odd seems to be happening with my file system, such that I am unable to write to certain directories as root. I don't know exactly when this started, but it has to have been within the last month or so--roughly coinciding with when I upgraded to kernel 2.6.15 (or possibly 2.6.14).
Here's some background info:
Some lines from /etc/fstab:
/dev/hda3 / ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/hda11 /usr reiserfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 /opt reiserfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /.devel reiserfs defaults 0 0
Output of 'ls -ld' on various directories:
drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 1024 2006-02-19 23:38 /
drwxr-xr-x 89 root root 2352 2006-02-19 23:39 /opt
drwxr-xr-x 40 root root 1128 2006-02-19 23:40 /opt/usr.local
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2005-11-08 13:54 /usr/local -> /opt/usr.local/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 17192 2006-01-24 14:25 /opt/usr.local/bin
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 184 2006-02-19 23:40 /.devel
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 576 2006-02-19 23:46 /.devel/src
drwxr-xr-x 52 root staff 2664 2006-02-19 23:41 /.devel/local.src
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2005-11-08 14:00 /usr/src -> /.devel/src/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root staff 17 2002-08-04 15:36 /usr/local/src -> /.devel/local.src
Yes, my partitioning scheme is a little weird. But it has evolved over several years of trial and error, and it has worked well for me until now. Anyway, here's what happens:
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /x
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /opt/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /opt/x
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /opt/usr.local/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /opt/usr.local/x
rmdir: `/opt/usr.local/x': Operation not permitted
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /opt/usr.local/bin/x
mkdir: cannot create directory `/opt/usr.local/bin/x': Permission denied
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /usr/local/y
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /usr/local/y
rmdir: `/usr/local/y': Operation not permitted
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /.devel/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /.devel/x
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /.devel/local.src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /.devel/local.src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /usr/local/src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /usr/local/src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /.devel/src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /.devel/src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# mkdir /usr/src/x
[root@swordfish ~]# rmdir /usr/src/x
So, like, WTF??
I have Googled for some clues on this (though it's a bit hard to figure out good search terms); I did find one or two hits that seemed relevant, but the respondents suggested running fsck on the affected partition. I've done that and found no errors.
So, what else? Something in my UDev configuration, maybe?

Answer 1

I had a problem like that a week or two ago on a reiser partition, though after running fsck.reiserfs it did find errors & fixed them
But before using them make sure you back up
HTH