I recently got a new external drive and backed all my files up on the new external: movies, music, docs, etc. Now all my files have permission rights to the root only.
I was able to change this by open up nautilis from a terminal in root and change the permission on the whole drive to my current user so I can access the files, copy & delete the files.
I wanted to change some music file information in Kynamo this morning and was not able to since all the individual files still belong to the root. How can I change this permission issue without having to change each individual file?
Filesystem is type ext3/ext4. Drive is usb connection.
Everything mounts fine and I have access to all my information, I only have the issue of not being able to change any information (music tags) unless I’m in root. I’m just wondering if there is a faster way to change the permission of the files without having to change each individual file music file.
On 06/06/2010 10:16 AM, the Dude abides wrote:
>
> Filesystem is type ext3/ext4. Drive is usb connection.
>
> Everything mounts fine and I have access to all my information, I only
> have the issue of not being able to change any information (music tags)
> unless I’m in root. I’m just wondering if there is a faster way to
> change the permission of the files without having to change each
> individual file music file.
>
> I’m not sure how to explain this any better.
When you copied the information, you likely created the files as root.
To change the ownership of all the files in a certain directory, you should
sudo chown -R <newuser>:users <directory>
Substitute your user name and the directory in question for the items
inside <>.
the Dude abides wrote:
> I only have the issue of not being able to change any information
> (music tags) unless I’m in root.
in you first post you wrote “and backed all my files up on the
new external” and i wonder how you did that:
who owned the UBS drive when you did that (did you own it, or root)
i believe, if the drive was mounted giving users access, then you
should have been able to (as yourself) copy the files over to the USB
as yourself OR use the -p switch as root and thereby preserve their
ownership as being yours (though you should not have had to be root to
copy them)…
or, i believe you could have used rsync and done the same thing,
with the correct switches applied…
what i am saying, you should not have to involve root at all now, but
you had to copy/rsync (or what ever you meant by “backup all my files
up”) in a way that ownership does NOT switch to root…
see:
man cp
man rsync
[and that is probably on two of many different ways to and “backed up”
the files without having your current frustration with needing root…]
Sorry for not being clear enough. When I backed up my files, what I meant was I copy and pasted my movie and music files to my external drive. I didn’t use rsync
Also I ran
sudo chown -R <newuser>:users <directory>
I changed the newuser & directory to my user and the location of my external drives folder which I wanted change and got
syntax error near unexpected token `newline’
When the external mounts is it given a mount point like /media/disk1
Or does your disk have a volume Label that ensures the same mount point every time?
For example if you give a disk a volume label Eg: EXTERNAL
It will always mount /media/EXTERNAL
I can’t understand why you don’t have r/rw access as it is but you could then do
Next time do not copy to an external media with a non Linux filesystem. Thus you will loose all ownership and access information.
And as said above, when you copy your personal data (from /home/<yourusername>) there is no need to do this as root, thus you should not do it as root.