chmod : permission denied
 

I had my Linux installation crash so installed a newer version (Suse 9.0) on another drive (IDE).
I want to recover my email and other bits from the old drive so mounted it as su using
mount /dev/hdh3 /home/user/oldlinux
but when I ls -l the Mail directory I get
/bin/ls: Mail: Permission denied
I tried
chmod a+rwx Mail
but get
chmod: failed to get attributes of 'Mail' : Permission denied

I can copy some of the files and directories to the new drive and set permissions.

Am I missing something?

Any help would be welcome.

This is from the top of my head, but If I remember correctly mount mounts read only if you don't tell it otherwise.

See man mount for the syntax.

It seems to be mounted OK because I've copied some files and directories to the new drive. chmod works OK on the Documents and other directories.

Are you executing the chmod command as root or as a regular user?

Should be root (or the owner of the mail file(s)).

Logged in as root and there are only a couple of directories I can't change. chmod works OK on the rest.