Ok, let's go back to:

1 members found this post helpful.

MX linux still won't let me enter a password for sudo so I've had to switch to the Mint Mate laptop to run the commands.

The result is "no such file or directory." So I ran it again with "/media/Danceman/Linux files" and with /media/Danceman/"Linux files" after the initial part of the command and both returned the same error message. It's beginning to look like I may have to copy the files off the usb hdd to somewhere else and reformat that drive correctly. I've resisted doing that because I don't have a convenient place to put them.

Does the mount command show that the USB device is still mounted in the same location, i.e. /media/Danceman/Linux\ files?

Also, could you please paste here the exact command and output that you are experiencing (copy and paste it from the command line).

/dev/sdb1 on /media/Danceman/Linux files type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,stripe=8191)

You may have missed my edit again. The terminal command/output would also be useful.

$ mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=1937028k,nr_inodes=484257,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=393324k,mode=755)
/dev/mapper/rootfs on / type ext4 (rw,noatime)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=786640k)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext4 (rw,noatime)
rpc_pipefs on /run/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw,relatime)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=12k,mode=755)
systemd on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,release_agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.systemd,name=systemd)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=393324k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/Danceman/Linux files type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,stripe=8191)

Sorry, I meant the command where you try to chown the files on the media device and it fails (see post #17).

danceman@T410-1:~$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/Danceman/Linux\ files
[sudo] password for danceman:
chown: cannot access '/media/Danceman/Linux files': No such file or directory
danceman@T410-1:~$
danceman@T410-1:~$
danceman@T410-1:~$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/danceman/Linux\ files
danceman@T410-1:~$
____________________________________________________

This appears to have solved the problem and files are now transferring by drag and drop. As you can see above it appears to have been an issue with case sensitivity in the username.

Thank you very much for the help and for sticking with me. I will have to check that this is also working in the T400 with MX linux and start another thread to find out why MX linux is not accepting the root password. I have had more success with programs that I use installing and running properly in MX linux so that is currently the direction I'm heading.

Great to hear. As regards the danceman/Danceman difference, the whoami you ran earlier definitely said that you were Danceman and the mount and ls commands confirmed that. Is there a possibility that on Mint and MX your username is different (danceman on one, Danceman on the other) and you were inadvertently providing output from both distros during this thread?

I'm sure that is the answer since I was switching back and forth between the two laptops. Details are important.

No problem. I was just trying to figure out how it happened.

Of interest to me, but I didn't mention it, is that the mount command shows your external HDD to have been mounted with a stripe parameter. I've never seen that before while using Mint and I thought it was usually used for a device that is part of a RAID array. If you have problems with that device, or you are just very inquisitive, you might want to start a thread to ask about that. It's probably nothing. Perhaps it is an MX thing?

I checked and the case on the username was indeed different between the two laptops.

The procedure used was a new unused Seagate 4T usb hdd, using Gparted, deleted the factory (Windows NTFS) partitions, then formatted with ext4, all done using Gparted (with GUI.) I later found instructions on dealing with the root issue while formatting that I now cannot seem to find again.

Checking in MX linux I could transfer files, but only by clicking on "open as root" in the Thunar menu. This is dangerous so I still need to find a solution. More searching has revealed that MX/antiX is set up to not like "sudo". I need to do more reading, but the command may be su or sux.

you might want to run chown on the partition, not the dir, if that is what you did.

There is only one partition on the drive, not sure how I would differentiate that in the command line.

The chown was done recursively on the root filesystem on the device's single partition. All should be good.