PERMISSIONS TO WRITE TO A FOLDER

I can't seem to write to the mnt/home/Downloads folder when using GIMP, Firefox or Abiword, due to lack of write permissions, but have checked the "permissions" tab for Downloads and for user and group settings it states: Read and Write.

Can anyone help, please?

 

What do you see when you do (at the prompt)

% ls -l /mnt/home

?
Can you write files in /home/user/Downloads ? (which should be the same place, just referenced in a different way)
Can you write files with other software?

 

Kevin, thanks for responding. Yes, I have write permissions to all the folders in the Documents folder. I'd chmod - R 777 on the Downloads folder yesterday.

****EDIT*** I thought I'd figured out a solution. I'd gone into the usr/bin folder, right-clicked the application I was interested in (firefox, abiword and GIMP), clicked properties, and in the Permissions tab, in the "Group" line, altered the "access" line underneath from read to read and write. It seemed to have done the trick, but when I rebooted a few hours later, I was back to square one :lol: :roll: Oh well, back to Linux 101 class.

 

not sure if this would help...but you could try in the command prompt:

chmod 666 /mnt/home/downloads

not sure if that will help your problem...but if it does im glad to have helped....oh and you might need to do that as the root user... "su root" then it will prompt you for the password!

Cheers

 

Devon, thanks for the help, but your chmod line wasn't effective.

 

Kevin, I currently see:-

drwxrwxr-x 2 user user 4096 2008-09-06 00:00 Desktop
drwxrwxrwx 3 user user 4096 2008-09-22 21:26 Documents
drwxr-xr-x 6 user user 4096 2008-09-22 22:02 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-09-19 17:37 Files
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2008-09-14 20:49 libfreebl3.so -> /usr/lib/libfreebl3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2008-09-14 20:49 libnspr4.so -> /usr/lib/libnspr4.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2008-09-14 20:49 libnss3.so -> /usr/lib/libnss3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2008-09-14 20:49 libnssckbi.so -> /usr/lib/libnssckbi.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2008-09-14 20:49 libplc4.so -> /usr/lib/libplc4.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2008-09-14 20:49 libplds4.so -> /usr/lib/libplds4.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2008-09-14 20:49 libsmime3.so -> /usr/lib/libsmime3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 2008-09-14 20:49 libsoftokn3.so -> /usr/lib/libsoftokn3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2008-09-14 20:49 libssl3.so -> /usr/lib/libssl3.so
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 16384 2008-09-19 17:33 lost+found
drwxrwxrwx 2 user user 4096 2008-09-22 21:41 Music
drwxrwxrwx 3 user wheel 4096 2008-09-22 12:51 Pictures
drwxrwxr-x 2 user user 4096 2008-09-22 12:51 Videos

No, and no. I can only write to the Downloads folder (and the music/video/pictures folders, as they are all in the same boat as the Downloads) when I go to the usr/share/applications or user/bin directory (both at root), and "execute" the program executable there with a right click of the mouse. However, when I reboot or start up again, I'm back to square one, without any write privileges. Any ideas?

 

Okay, I'm on a road to somewhere now, even though I seem to be talking to myself here. If I take the SDHC card out of the left hand slot and disassociate it from the onboard SSD, I no longer have the problem and can write to wherever I like.

It appears that the Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures and Video folders are set to ROOT for "owner" in the permissions tab on the SDHC card I installed in the left hand slot. I wonder if they were all set to USER, then I could combine the storage capacity of the two SSDs again and writing to files would no longer be an issue :?: :idea:

Does anyone have any ideas on how to change the permissions of the owner from root to user? Googling now...

This has been a real education, but a pain in the arse, as well.

 

sudo su
chown user <file/directory name> -- put the file or directory name here without <>
chgrp user <file/directory name> -- put the file or directory name here without <>
exit

 

Cheers ozorba, I'd managed to change permissions with the chown command using info from the link below, but the chgrp info you provided enabled me to change the group setting as well. Thanks a lot for your help. And so far so good, I can write to any folder in My Documents with the SDHC card fitted in the left slot and combined with the memory of the internal SSD.

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:sd_permissions>

 

Thanks a mil for that link. Which (if you are still around) file in Linpus did you edit? The one at the link pertains to the Xandros distro, but obviously our /etc/udev/ directory contains no such file. I'm guessing it's "60-persistent-storage.rules", but it would be nice to know for sure before I start editing system files.