How to change folder permissions and ownership

[Fred]

A couple, or more, questions:

1. Where are the files you are trying to access? In your home directory or somewhere else? If somewhere else, where?

2. What kind of installation do you have? How many operating systems do you have installed and what are they?

3. How many hard drives do you have in the system and how are they partitioned and formatted?

4. Did this problem just start out of the blue or did it start when you installed an operating system or some other event?

This should get us started.

Fred

[deadguy]

they are external usb hard drives??

are they formatted fat32 or ntfs??

are you using mint disk????

[BakUp]

You could try this in a terminal:

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sudo gksudo nautilus

That will bring up the nautilus root mode file manager.
Then go to your mounted USB > right click > Properties > permission > there you should be able to set the permission to_your_user_name.

[BakUp]

I tried Nautilus but when I try to change the group(I am listed as owner , group is listed as root) it tells me I don't have permissions to change. This is driving me crazy along with the fact that the HP media drive will not mount now since I removed it to use with another computer.gmanm1

When you view group as root, there should be a pull down option there to change it, look around.........

[deadguy]

do you have mint disk set to mount ntfs and fat32 partitions?
it allows read and write access for owner(root), group(user) and others.
(that's how mint disk set up my external fat32 drive anyway.)

[BakUp]

Does nautilus show "root-file browser" at the top ? It should !

Also deadguy has good point in his post.

[BakUp]

I have tried all the chmod and chown I am getting nowhere.

Ok, If you have used these commands in a terminal then nothing new to tell you about those commands.

But I have one thing left that always works for me, I didn't mention it before because it involves installing from the package manager Synaptic. It is called Krusader, a dual pane file manager:

First, install Krusader using the package manager from the Mint Menu

After it is installed, open your Mint menu, go to > applications > accessories > krusader > tools > start root mode krusader > sign in using your administrator password >

Then dig your way into the folder you want to change permission, right click that folder, choose the permission tab, there you can change the permission to your user name, before you exit, check the box at the bottom to change permission also on all subdirectories and files.

Check out a similar thread here:
http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=7375

[BakUp]

I don't have an amin account. Is that the problem. I have me and root. I opened in krusader but says it is not a file but a folder. This is ridiculous.
gmanm1

I am very sorry you are having this problem.

Open the Mint menu > administration > Users and Groups >
highlite your user name > choose properties > user privileges

There you can choose your options, be sure that administer the systems is checked, then while you are in there check or uncheck any other options that you are interested in.

wishing you the best gmanm1,
BakUp

[BakUp]

I have tried all the chmod and chown

When you used these commands, did you enter "sudo" ahead of the command ?

If you did not enter sudo ahead of your commands, then that is one problem unless you were in a root terminal.

If you did enter sudo ahead of the commands but was not asked for a password, then you are not in the sudoers file:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/sudo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

You would always be asked for your administrator password when opening things such as:
- root nautilus
- Krusader root mode
- synaptic package manager
- terminal commands that require a sudo password

These are just a few examples that would require having a administrator password.
I am thinking more and more this may be your problem.

At install time you were presented with entering a system administrator password, which would be you, the user. Maybe you missed that option, just my wild guess though.

Does any of this make sense ? Let us know if this may be the problem.....

[BakUp]

What command should I be typing to change this and from where.

To find out your USB device, run this command in a terminal;

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sudo fdisk -l

This command should change permission:

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sudo chown gmanm1:gmanm1 /media/****

(**** fill in whatever your device is using fdisk above, should be something similar to "sdc1")