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I'm really struggling to access certain folders. I'm assuming this is something to do with the filesystem. Currently, I'm unable to copy folders into the .config folder.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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3 Answers 3

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Permissions take a little time to understand.

You should be the owner of all files and directories in your home directory.

You should not change ownership / permission of files or directories outside of your home directory. Doing so can break Ubuntu. Access system files as root.

See:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FilePermissions

Change folder permissions and ownership

If you need more specific advice, what is the full path to the file or directory you need to access? What are the current permissions (ls -l .config)?

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Ran into this last night. If you have permissions to access the folder (chmod, chown) but still can't access the folder, make sure the x bit is set for the folder. It's not intuitive, but you have to have execute permissions on the directory itself.

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Permissions can be changed in the file manager (Nautilus) by right-clicking, clicking on "Properties" then clicking on the "Permissions" tab.

If the directory is owned by "root" or "nobody", permissions may be locked. If you have to override this, try running the file manager (Nautilus) with superuser rights. To do this, open a Terminal then type in sudo nautilus. From there, you can navigate to those now unlocked folders and change their permissions as you want.

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  • Depending on the file or directory, that can break Ubuntu. Lots of questions here with broken systems after changing ownership or permissions of system directories / files.
    – Panther
    Nov 12, 2013 at 21:02
  • When I try that, I get the following error... ** (nautilus:2597): WARNING **: Could not inhibit power management: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.gnome.SessionManager" does not exist
    – Matthew David
    Nov 12, 2013 at 22:14
  • @bodhi.zazen Maybe a warning should be added for that. I think GUI solutions are still easier to follow than trying to memorize commands. There's a similar to mine in the one you linked to.
    – kelvinilla
    Nov 14, 2013 at 16:28
  • @MatthewDavid You can still go change the permission of the folder of you wanted regardless of that warning.
    – kelvinilla
    Nov 14, 2013 at 16:30
  • @kelvinilla - Whatever works. The command line works on all distros and all window managers and all file managers and as with anything else is easy once you are familiar with it. Do not confuse ease of use with familiarity ;).
    – Panther
    Nov 14, 2013 at 17:45

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