[CentOS] Chmod Explaination

Howdy list,

 I can't seem to find any doc's explaining what's really going on behind
this scenario:

A user home directory had been reset to :

d--- --- --- user group user_dir


As root i tried to :

chmod -R 750 user_dir

got permission denied, my friend tried with as user that owns the directory
to:

chmod -R 750 user_dir  and voila it works.

My question is how come did it work, since the user_dir doesn't have a owner
permission attached and why user root has been denied with changing the
mode?


Rgds,

Joseph
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20070803/1feca654/attachment.html>