Ubuntu

how do I change permissions ownership on new volumes?

Asked by ngodfather114

I got a new back up hard drive and can open files easily, However when I try to write to this new drive I get a message saying I'm not the owner and I can't even change permissions. New to ubuntu , hate windows, please help with a simple solution.
Thanks in advance.

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said : 		#1

Without a bit more info on what exactly you want to do it's hard to give you precise directions. For example, what is the file system of the new drive? If it's a Linux format drive (probably ext3 for something set up in Ubuntu) you can change ownership with the chown command. You can also do it from a root nautilus window but I've heard people say that's not the best way. To open nautilus as root open a terminal and type

gksudo nautilus

and give your password when asked.

To do it from a terminal do

sudo chown username:username /path/to/file

That will change the ownership of a file to be owned by username (usually your own login name). The part after the colon is for group but most often the group is the same as your username. If you want to change on a whole bunch of files in a directory do

sudo chown -R username:username /path/to/dir/

That will change all ownership in the entire dir. Be careful when using that on system dirs and such or you can really mess up your system. On a back up hard drive with your own files it's safe.

If you problem is different, please elaborate.

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