Permissions denied

dms05 · 11-03-2007, 11:54 AM

I've just started to get the error message 'Permissions Denied' when I try to access hda5 which is my /usr partition. My / partition is OK and shows Owner root-root and drwxr-xr-x but I can't access the details for /usr. I've no idea about Permissions so what can I do?

matthewg42 · 11-03-2007, 11:57 AM

How are you trying to access it?

dxqcanada · 11-03-2007, 11:58 AM

What does the "mount" command show you about hda5 ?
You should also have an entry in your /etc/fstab also.

dms05 · 11-03-2007, 12:15 PM

Mount shows:

$ mount hda5
mount: can't open /etc/mtab for writing: Input/output error

That's using Konsole as User rather than Root.

I get the same result if I try to mount from My Computer / Storage Media / hda5 and I also get the same result for a couple of SD cards and the XP hda2.

dms05 · 11-03-2007, 12:17 PM

I've now looked and don't seem to have anything called /etc/mtab either as User or when Root

dms05 · 11-03-2007, 12:20 PM

/etc/fstab shows:

# /dev/hda5, size=15470532, type=131: Linux native (extended)
/dev/hda5 /home ext2 noatime 1 2

Will anything be 'hidden'?

dms05 · 11-03-2007, 12:46 PM

hda7, which is my / partition shows the same output from mount as hda5 but I'm obviously accessing it (and can write text files back to /home/username

$ mount hda7
mount: can't open /etc/mtab for writing: Input/output error

btmiller · 11-03-2007, 03:31 PM

Just try the "mount" command. If you type "mount hda7" chances are the mount command will think you're actually trying to mount a partition called hda7 (which is nonsensical anyhow). You can't mount generally as a non-root user hence the permission denied.