Permissions

General Help
1

Hi there, new to this forum and linux, have installed Zorin coming from Windows 10, I have the windows drives still installed and they show as mounted. The have movies and music that I wish to share with another windows 10 machine, however I can't share because of permissions, being new to linux is there a utility that I can use to change shares?. Any help much appreciated, LOVE ZORIN

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Are you dual booting or just using the drives as Storage?

3

Just drives as storage

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The terminal command that works for me is:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/$USER

Replace /media with the path to the drive, if necessary. Replace $USER with your username if necessary.

I have never had this not work, but other users on this forum have said it did not work for them.

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5

Thanks for the help, I was trying to avoid using terminal, I was hoping there was a nice utility for doing the job.

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6

I am not sure why you would want to avoid the terminal...
It is one command pasted in - done.

I do not believe gnome-disks offers this in GUI, someone please correct me if I am wrong. I looked all over Disks and could not find that option.

I suppose it can be done using the File manager, but you would need to elevate the File Manager to root - using the terminal.

I just did a net search looking for a GUI utlity that can change disk permissions but did not find anything. I am spending far more time sifting through duckduckgo search hits than I spent typing out sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/$USER.

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7

40 years of using windows has made me a bit simple, i'm having a bit of trouble the terminal, can you explain sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/$USER . what should I put as user, is that the name of the install, thanks for all your trouble

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8

While I used Windows for less time, it was all I had ever used when I migrated to Linux via Zorin OS.
The most I had ever used the terminal for in Windows was ipconfig /renew-all

Fortunately, the terminal in Linux is very easy to learn and use. It looks intimidating but really is a big ol' teddy bear.
It is powerful, efficient and it can be configured to help you each step of the way.
I make mine talk, and it suggests commands to me when I cannot remember them off hand, or suggest packages to remove or install.
I can teach you how.

In the meantime, let's look at this one command.
sudo
In Zorin OS, Sudo is much like "Grant Administrator" in Windows. It merely means, Super User DO. As in, do this.
S-U-DO
Using sudo tells the system that you are performing a root password protected function.
chown
This stands for CHange OWnership. Anytime you change the ownership of a file, you can use the chown command.
-R The dash notes the usage, and the R stands for recursive. This means that all files in the directory you specify will be affected by the command, not just the parent directory that contains the files.
$USER:$USER - This, is you. The user.
/media/$USER - This is the path to the drive you need to change ownership of. In Linux, you get used to seeing the Directory Tree path using / to separate the directories.
For example, the path to your Pictures directory would be:
/home/$USER/Pictures
You can replace $USER, which is the generic symbol for any user, with the actual username you created when you set up Zorin OS. This is the name you are greeted with when you log in, your user account.
Let's say that your username is the same as it is on the forum:
home/picard256/Pictures

In the command above, I refer to the likeliest place your Drives will appear: /media

We can use Disks utility, that you can find in your app menu, to get a Precise path to your external drives.
But I set the command up above in a simple way- that is, any media you plug n' play, will have You as the Owner.

Again, if we assume that picard256 is the username on your computer, yuo command would look like:

sudo chown -R picard256:picard256 /media/picard256

All you need to do is highlight and copy the command, then right click in your terminal and select Paste.
Then hit enter.
If your username is not picard256 but is bob, then:

sudo chown -R bob:bob /media/bob

You asked me to explain - so I did. But do not worry about memorizing all commands. That will happen inevitably... But a lot of the time, we all just look them up in references.:wink:
So as above, with this verbose text, it looks complicated, but really was as straight-forward as copying the text, changing to your username, then pasting it in terminal and hitting enter.

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9

Thanks for that , very helpfull, I've been scouring linux sites for days trying to make sense of it all.

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10

There is a better way.

  1. In terminal write: sudo nautilus
  2. Go to the drive and right mouse click in the drive and select config -> rights -> owner
    Root -> Your username
    Group -> Your username
  3. Go to the app called "disk"
  4. Select your disk
  5. Hit the extra partition options
  6. Mount options
  7. Untick user session
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11

Whether 7 different steps is better than one entered command is debateable.:wink:

But thanks, I was hoping someone that knows nautilus better than I would chime in with how to do so in Nautilus File Manager.

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12

I thought i read that you said that it did not work for others. So i thought maybe i can post a new way :grin:

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It's pretty funny. It works for me and it works when covered on every other Linux forum.
But on two occasions on this forum, the user said it did not work. And I do not understand how it couldn't have worked.

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Thanks for the reply, sudo nautilus brings up nautilus but can't see select config

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You need to click on the hard drive you want to mount. Then in the hard drive right click on a empty space and hit config

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