Read / Write Permission on Folder

Question

I am running Linux Mint 16 and looks like I am having permission issues with a Data folder. Vuze is giving me an error message.

'Error Failed to Create Parent Directory 'media/jholderman/Data/Vuze Downloads/Arch Linux/ArchLinux2014.iso''

I tried this answer from superuser and this didnt change anything: How can I give write-access of a folder to all users in linux?

jholderman@JMH-Server ~ $ sudo chgrp -R users /media/jholderman/Data
jholderman@JMH-Server ~ $ sudo chmod -R g+w /media/jholderman/Data/
jholderman@JMH-Server ~ $ sudo find /media/jholderman/Data -type d -exec chmod 2775 {} \;  
jholderman@JMH-Server ~ $ sudo find /media/jholderman/Data/ -type f -exec chmod ug+rw {} \;

I even went ahead and did it the GUI way and it appears that it doesnt save. When I elevate privileges in the file browser and modify the folder, and the drives permissions it never saves when I re-examine it? Why is that?

Any help?

Solution

Your issue is Vuze is not a user or group on your system. You need to allow write permission to other. Run:

sudo chmod -R o+w /media/jholderman/Data/

With the chmod command you are working with 3 different areas. User, Group and Other. The first two are instances on your system while the third covers everything else.

Since you are using the letter format rather than number to assign permissions with chmod you also have an 'all' area to work with.

For more detail on how all this works you can see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod"> here

Comments

[Matthew Williams]

Correct me if I am wrong, but Vuze would not be a user on your system. You would need to allow write permissions to other for this external application to write to your file.

[Jon H]

so replace the first line with other instead of users?

[Jon H]

chgrp: invalid group: ‘other’

[Matthew Williams]

No run sudo chmod -R o+w /media/jholderman/Data/

[Jon H]

Worked, post as answer and if you dont mind answering what that does would be great. Im assuming the o is for other? And why does the GUI way not work?

[Matthew Williams]

Good stuff. I have included a link in my post if you wish to read more on permissions here. For the GUI I assume you where assigning permission to the Group rather than other?

[Jon H]

Thanks for the info. The GUI way I actually changed all 3 sections to read/write and that never saved. Not sure why, but the terminal way does work.

[Matthew Williams]

It probably didn't save because of permissions. As you can imagine not just anyone can change file permissions. The GUI doesn't allow you to specify this while terminal does. Hence why I always work in terminal ;) Have fun downloading.