When I plug in my external Hard drive, insert a DVD, or try to see what I've got on my USB drive, peculiar behavior is the usual outcome.
The filesystems mount fine. When I log in as root through sudo su
, I can see the contents of the /media/casper/externaldrive
perfectly fine. My user however, casper
, can't. Ubuntu replies to every action that involves the location Permission denied
:
casper@casper-desktop:/media$ ll /media/casper/externaldrive
ls: cannot access '/media/casper/externaldrive': Permission denied
I decided to do some digging into the permission (problems) of the /media
folder. As casper
, I see the following:
casper@casper-desktop:/media$ ls -alF
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 apr 21 17:47 ./
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 jul 29 15:43 ../
drwxr-x--- 3 root root 4096 aug 3 21:02 casper/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 45 apr 21 17:47 .directory -> /etc/kubuntu-default-settings/directory-media
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 apr 21 17:47 .hidden -> /etc/kubuntu-default-settings/hidden-media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 feb 29 23:56 home/
What struck me was that it said total 16
, while there are only at most 6 listings. So I ran the command again, but as root
. The result was the same, weird. (can anyone enlighten me on this?)
Anyway, what struck me even more was that the /media/casper
directory is not mine and also can't be accessed by me. I got tempted to just chown -R
the bazinkas out of it, but after I got a hold of myself I googled something like "Media user folder not mine help me".
It took a while but finally I stumbled upon this thread, where users explain the purpose of 750 root:root /media/user
folders. It makes sure only root can mount, view and manage filesystems there, of which the individual permissions are changed to the actual user.
So if my information was correct, the /media/casper/externaldrive
permissions should be favorable for me. I checked,
root@casper-desktop:/media/casper# ll
total 12
drwxr-x--- 3 root root 4096 aug 3 21:02 ./
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 apr 21 17:47 ../
drwxrwxrwx 1 casper casper 4096 aug 3 20:20 externaldrive/
And this seems to be the case.
So this is where I'm stuck. The filesystem has permissions for me all the way through the directory tree, yet I can't access a single file. This is the same for CD's and USB drives.
Who can help me access my precious?
Oh, and by the way. Aforementioned thread speaks of ACL on these /media/user
folders, indicated by a +
after the regular permissions, like drwxr-x---+ 3 root root
. My system does not show this. Is ACL on these folders standard for Ubuntu or did the user have special things going on, and should I be worried that this is where my problem comes from?
Thanks for reading.
ls
total count 1kB blocks used by the files in the directory, non-recursively. See unix.stackexchange.com/a/4110/44281 .drwxr-x--- 3*
mean?