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Gedit can't save files. My Gedit has greyed out the 'Save' button, and only offers to 'Close without saving'. Other programs saves the same files without any problems and i seem to have enough rights. This happends with files all my home folder, even on a usb drive. With 'gksudo gedit' it works. But i have the permission for the file, and i can save the file if i open it with Libre office write instead, only gedit will not. If i make a test file on my desktop, that have the permission read and write, for Me, my group and others. I open it with gedit, i cannot save it. open it with libre office i can save it. with 'sudo gedit' it does not work, but with 'gksudo gedit' i can save it. i must have broken something in gedit?

The only thing i have been messing with are changing the 'Run', 'Display or 'Ask' option for texts files in Nautilus, but i set it back. I also reinstalled gedit.

I can't figure out what to do, please help.

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    Make sure the directory gedit wants to save a file is owned by you and not by root. You probably changed the default save location to something owned by root by using sudo or gksudo...
    – Rinzwind
    Jan 25, 2015 at 8:33
  • But, if i use 'LO Writer' in stead, i don't have any problems. And it, not only one directory, it everywhere, desktop, homefolder ext. drives. The problem are one with gedit.
    – mote
    Jan 25, 2015 at 14:29
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    Could you do a ` gsettings list-recursively | grep --ignore-case gedit` and copy-paste the output to paste.ubuntu.com and provide a link back here and then drop a comment @Fabby?
    – Fabby
    Jan 27, 2015 at 19:49
  • @Fabby I was installing ecryptfs-utils and did a lot in a SU terminal. Another user that tried to help me at the forums, thinks that i made problems in dbus. Unfortunately it's above my knowledge. ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2262774 Here are the pastebin of bith gedit and eog. All other apps and users work fine. paste.ubuntu.com/9912966
    – mote
    Jan 28, 2015 at 7:55
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    Sorry, then I cannot help you. If I were you, I'd reinstall and start taking system backups as you're definitely user type 4! ;-(
    – Fabby
    Jan 28, 2015 at 10:19

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Use the following steps to circumvent the issue: (this is a workaround, not a solution)

  • create a new user (E.g. mote2 for original user mote)
  • with the same groups as the other user (if you need details on that, leave a comment)

Now:

  1. open the file manager
  2. browse to the /home/mote directory
  3. copy (not move!) all the files from Downloads to /home/mote2/Downloads
  4. check you did a good job.
  5. Now delete /home/mote/Downloads
  6. Go back to step 3 and repeat for Documents, Videos, ...
  7. In a terminal type the following command: deluser mote --remove-home

Done!

Why? As you have seriously messed up some problems with the current's user profile, some setting somewhere in one of the .config files is causing a problem. As we can't solve this problem in a reasonable amount of time, it's best to just leave that profile behind and starting afresh!

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    Thanks, that was just the solution i had figured out my self. You get all the stars and upvotes i have. ;-) Thanks
    – mote
    Jan 29, 2015 at 10:53
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    +1 This also works for problem files in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on my NTFS partition /mnt/e which is E:\ within windows. I've been struggling for a couple of hours trying various things but cp /mnt/e/bin/* /mnt/e/bin2/ was an easy fix!
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Mar 24, 2019 at 21:06
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix Yup: it's a universal solution independent of OS.
    – Fabby
    Mar 24, 2019 at 22:22

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