First, deleting an existing directory of an uninstalled addon ... does not remove it from the Modules list

Removing the module folder will have no effect on what shows up in the list.

When OpenERP is told to 'Update Modules List' it will store a database row for each module it finds on disk. The only way to delete these database entries is to remove them by deleting the module inside OpenERP.

You can delete all entries for uninstalled modules, then update the list. This will update the list to show only those modules on disk (not re-adding those that have been deleted).

Update the module list Settings>Modules>Update Module List>Update

checks for manifest file __openerp__.py and for directory ./static/

Some modules has not ./static/ directory

So what do you do if the update module list option isn't there ?

You mentioned chmod but not chown. Are the user permissions correct? Not familiar with the .deb installer, but if it's in pyshared/ the module and contents may need to be owned by a certain user, root or maybe openerp?

The same thing happened to me on my Linux (Ubuntu) Installation. I noticed that I was adding my custom-module to the wrong addons directory. When you install a .deb file, or using source the actual openerp installation lands up here by default:

/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/openerp/addons

This is where you are supposed to add your own module and NOT to the openerp source you downloaded initially.

Then run:

openerp-server

or

openerp-server --init=(your_module_name)

If this is not where your OpenERP is installed, then try finding the actual directory where your openerp installation resides and put your custom module there before you run the server.

Note: This is just one of the possible solution case to your problem.