I've recently installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my laptop, but I can't do anything with my 1.5TB external drive, and my 500GB because I don't have write permission. Are there any specific commands I can use in the terminal to set the read/write permissions?
The external is NTFS, and the 500GB is ext4.
311 Answers
for your 500 GB hard-drive (ext4) filesystem, you need to give the write and execute permission on /media/username/your_drive partition:-
sudo chmod ugo+wx /media/username/your_driveBrief Explanation:-
sudo :- it will elevate your priviledges to execute the command.
chmod:- command to change the permissions
u :- user
g:- group
o :- other
/media/username/your_drive :- partition
For your NTFS partition please follow fossfreedom's advice.
Hope this is helpful.
3If you don't mind the security problems you can do a recursive chmod in order to change the permissions of all the files.
cd /media/your_external_drive
sudo chmod -R -v 777 *Also if your files were created in another OS like windows they will have different ownership you can do the same as above to change the ownership of the files
cd /media/your_external_drive
sudo chown -R -v your_username:your_username *Thats the way I solved a similar problem for my friend after migrating from windows and also after migrating from Linux Mint to Ubuntu.
4To fix read/write issue ntfs, just install these packages:
sudo apt-get install ntfs-config ntfs-3gwhen installed, in the dash, type in and run: ntfs-config enter your password when prompted, and then you can enjoy read/write support for ntfs file systems.
Don't mark all your files as executable as some answers suggest. Use 755 for directories and 644 for files. This will set the x bit for directories in order to list their contents but not for files.
find /path/to/drive \( -type d -exec chmod 0755 -- {} + \) -o \( -type f -exec chmod 0644 -- {} + \)Link to the original answer on StackOverflow: How to set chmod for a folder and all of its subfolders and files in Linux Ubuntu Terminal?.
3I had the same problem and solved it with nautilus as root.
if nautilus is not installed:
sudo apt-get install nautilusBefore running nautilus make sure the partition or hard disk is mounted.
Run nautilus as root with
sudo nautilusYour partition or hard disk should appear on the left.
Right click on it -> select "Properties"
In the new window that appears, select the "Permissions" tab. From here you can change the owner if you need to, as well as the permission for a certain user, root, or others.
2I was having a hard time solving the problem and this solution worked for me
install physical storage device manger:
sudo apt-get install pysdmOpen storage device manger:
sudo pysdmChoose your required drives
- Press assist
- Uncheck open as read only
- Check owner user of file system and write your username
- Press ok and apply
- Remount the drive
Note: if you can't change files to binary executables, go to special files and check permit execution of files as binaries, and go to step 7
3Using Terminal (Use this when you are currently logged in Ubuntu):
Quickly open the terminal or press CtrlAltT
First you need to find out the partition’s name which you want to access, run the following command:
sudo fdisk -lThen run this command in your terminal, to access your drive in read/write mode.
mount -t ntfs-3g -o rw /dev/sda1 /media/<YOUR-Partition-name>OR Run this command (if the previous didn’t work)
sudo ntfsfix /dev/<YOUR-Partition-name>
I formatted my extended partition using GParted and the resulted drive had only root level access. In order to grant access to my username, I executed below command.
sudo chown -v username:username /media/username/disk-nameI look around the forum for answers.
I have 3 users, "user1" ,"user2", "user3":
- user1 : is sudo user with most of the access
- user2 : is also sudo user with less access
- user3 : is just another user with no sudo access
Im trying to give access to partitions 1 and 2 to user1, user2 and user3 . The owner of the partition is root. the partitions are mounted at
/media/user2/1
/media/user2/2Note : I tried to mount the partition using
sudo mkdir /media/IntHDD170
sudo mkdir /media/IntHDD171Which created the directory to mount the partitions.
- (I dont know this worked or not)
Step 1:
- Used nautilus as root.
- if nautilus is not installed: sudo apt-get install nautilus
- Before running nautilus make sure the partition or hard disk is mounted.
Run nautilus as root with
sudo nautilusYour partition or hard disk should appear on the left.
Right click on it -> select "Properties"
In the new window that appears, select the "Permissions" tab.
Kept the owner as "root" and group as "user1" with read and write access for both owner and group.
From here you can change the owner if you need to, as well as the permission for a certain user, root, or others.
Note: The user1 ,user2 and user3 did not get access to the partitions yet
Step 2: Added User2 and user3 to group "user1".
usermod -aG user1 user2
usermod -aG user1 user3Step 3:
Did
chmod -R 777 /media/user2/1
chmod -R 777 /media/user2/2opened
sudo nano /etc/fstabWent to the last line entered:
LABEL=/dev/sda3 /media/$USER/1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0 LABEL=/dev/sda4 /media/$USER/2 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0Saved and Exited
Note: Now i am able to read and write files to the partitions 1 and 2.
Only issue is, if i have logged into user1 , then try to access partition 1 from user2 , it is not accessible.
I do a reboot:
sudo reboot And access partition 1 from user2.
I don't know if this is the right way to do it. Just combined many responses and did. Somehow its working.
Just in case!
I had this problem in a dual boot (Mint + W10) when windows didn't close down properly. I tried all the combinations to get rw permissions. Finally,
sudo mount -alet me know the problem.
Going back to windows and turning off the pc did the job. Rights where restored! The fstab entries are written using ntfs-config.
If you are dualbooting windows and Ubuntu then there is an issue of improper dismount of hard-disks by windows. I observed this when I shut down from windows and switch to Ubuntu, I lose my write access to the disks even though I have Read and Write enabled. So, either you can turn off a feature of fast booting windows in the Power Options of Windows or you can Hibernate the windows and then switch to Ubuntu. This solved it for me. :-)
