chmod : permission denied

onebyone · 01-27-2004, 01:02 PM

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.

druuna · 01-27-2004, 01:11 PM

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.

onebyone · 01-27-2004, 02:02 PM

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.

druuna · 01-27-2004, 02:14 PM

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

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

onebyone · 01-27-2004, 02:29 PM

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