I keep data on a separate disk that I mount after starting Linux Mint 17. I also use files from this disk when running Windows 7 as a standard user on my dual-boot computer.

In Linux Mint, I can read and write document files on this disk in Libre Office. Libre Office in Windows, on the other hand, made me save the files from this disk with a different name, and indicated I didn't own the original.

I'm the only one who uses this computer, so I thought I'd go into chmod and do a ugo=rw for the files in question.

Alas, I can't. The chmod commands work fine for files in my home directory, but not for files in /media/diskname (e.g., in the separate disk).

Is there a way around this? I don't expect to do much work under Windows in the future, but worry about what will happen when I use this data disk with another computer running Linux. I fear I'll have to open all the files as read only, and save them with different names.

The normal user owns the directories/files in /home/user. The normal user does not own directories/files anywhere else on the system as a general rule. With Mint, to change owner/permissions you need to prefix the command with sudo to get root privileges. Also, is this partition in Linux filesystem format or windows. Generally sperking, standard Linux permissions are not understood by windows so if this is a windows (ntfs/FAT32) filesystem, that won't work.

Thanks for the response, yancek, although I got a bit of a sinking feeling when I read it.

The drive was formatted with FAT32 under Windows. I have used "su" to try changing chmod settings on this drive as root user, but without results.

If I understand your post correctly, it sounds like there's nothing I can do to set permissions properly on this drive without formatting the drive with a Linux file format. Is that correct?

Indeed, Windows' filesystems simply don't support UNIX file permissions, so you would have to reformat using a filesystem that supports those permissions. Keep in mind that Windows by default can't read any of the Linux filesystems, though, so that you will have to look for appropriate drivers for your Windows installation to have access to that filesystem.

Since the FAT32 filesystem carries no indication of ownership, Libre Office in Windows must be seeing some ownership tag contained within the file itself. Such a tag would not be affected by your choice of a different filesystem.

I checked the drive, and it looks like it's NTFS after all. I apologize for giving misinformation in my second post in this thread. I also ran an experiment with image files (untouched by Libre Office) in two test directories, one on the data drive and one in my home directory. Once again, chmod worked as advertised in home, but changed nothing on the data drive.

I found this post on the askubuntu forum:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1184...at32-partition

and think I ought to try the advice given before troubling linuxquestions users for more help. I might postpone the experimentation, though. I'm still very new to this OS, and the commands given in the linked thread look challenging for a newbie. I'd like to learn more basic Linux commands first!

Hi Adam,

also as a linux newbie this is my first post here!

I had a similar problem here too. chmod will not change the ownership of a file. The command you can look at is chown.

you also need to do this with root account. Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll have to revert to the way I solved the problem.

There is so much to learn- and I forget so much after such a short time.......
Robert