0

Today, each and every file and photo I tried to open showed up the message You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "File". I can neither open or copy them. In properties section for each, it shows size, location, type unknown as well as permissions as unknown. What should I do?

drw------- 3 prashant prashant    4096 Jan 22 15:31 Desktop
drw------- 7 prashant prashant    4096 Jan 18 13:08 Documents
drw------- 7 prashant prashant    4096 Jan 22 02:32 Downloads
drw------- 2 prashant prashant    4096 Jan 11 12:03 dwhelper
-rw------- 1 prashant prashant    8445 Jan  9 08:18 examples.desktop
drw------- 2 prashant prashant    4096 Jan  9 08:20 Music
drw------- 3 prashant prashant    4096 Jan 20 18:22 Pictures
drw------- 2 prashant prashant    4096 Jan  9 08:20 Public
-rw------- 1 prashant prashant    1972 Jan 22 14:41 SoftEther-VPN-Server
-rw------- 1 prashant prashant 5301222 Jan 22 15:00 softether-vpnserver-v4.04-9412-rtm-2014.01.15-linux-x64-64bit.tar.gz,
drw------- 2 prashant prashant    4096 Jan  9 08:20 Templates,
drw------- 2 prashant prashant    4096 Jan  9 08:20 Videos,
drwx------ 5 prashant prashant    4096 Jan 22 16:12 vpnserver
chmod 600 *
chmod 700 vpnserver
chmod 700 vpncmd
8
  • 1
    open a terminal and run command: 'ls -l' paste output
    – koni_raid
    Jan 22, 2014 at 14:44
  • What is it supposed to do? Tried and got the edited portion in question.
    – user234815
    Jan 22, 2014 at 14:50
  • it shows that you are not the owner of these directories. Jan 22, 2014 at 14:56
  • Prior to this happening, had you run and sudo chmod commands?
    – douggro
    Jan 22, 2014 at 15:31
  • Yeah, I did while installing Softether vpn @douggro
    – user234815
    Jan 22, 2014 at 15:36

1 Answer 1

0

Provided that you did not use the -R recursive command, you can recover from this using

cd ~/
chmod 755 *
chmod 644 examples.desktop
chmod 777 Public
chmod 700 vpnserver
chmod 775 softether-vpnserver-v4.04-9412-rtm-2014.01.15-linux-x64-64bit.tar.gz

I can't give instructions for the dwhelper directory or the SoftEther-VPN-Server file as I don't know what the default permissions of those should be. I suspect that 755 will be fine for for both of them.

In the future when using chmod be very specific about what file or directory you are changing permissions on. The wildcard * will apply it to everything in the specified or current directory. Read man chmod for the full list of chmod commands and implications of usage.

1
  • Thanks a lot. Problem solved. And I definitely going to read man chmod next.
    – user234815
    Jan 22, 2014 at 16:39

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .