No such file or directory when chown on newly created directory

Question

I'm a very new Ubuntu user (14.04 LTS) and this is my first question here.

I am trying to follow the instructions from this Reddit thread about mounting an NTFS hard disk to use as a Plex media library (https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/2opw25/super_annoying_permissions_issue/cmqjcml)

After creating (with sudo) the /media/samsung directory (in my case) I cannot change the owner as the directory cannot be found. The casing is correct. Here is output showing the directory and the error...

$ dir
Desktop    Downloads         media  Pictures          Public     Videos
Documents  examples.desktop  Music  plexmedialibrary  Templates

$ cd media
~/media$ dir
samsung
~/media$ cd ../..
/home$ sudo chown paul:paul /media/samsung
[sudo] password for paul: 
chown: cannot access ‘/media/samsung’: No such file or directory
/home$

What is wrong here? I'm finding Ubuntu very frustrating so far. TIA.

possible duplicate of How do I use 'chmod' on an NTFS (or FAT32) partition? — muru, Jan 27 '15 at 20:00
"After creating (with sudo) the /media/samsung directory". When did you do that?(it is not in the commands you supplied). — Rinzwind, Jan 27 '15 at 20:09
@Rinzwind aside from the typo, chmod/chown on an NTFS in itself is not going to work, hence the possible dupe. — muru, Jan 27 '15 at 20:10
Yes, I know. But it is not an answer to the problem; it is an answer to what user the wants. So I am in doubt _O- — Rinzwind, Jan 27 '15 at 20:12
I created the media and media\samsung folders previous to this step. That was successful. the script I included here was just to demonstrate the apparent incongruity between the existence of the folder and the error message. I shall try elmer82's proposed answer tomorrow. — Paul Davies, Jan 27 '15 at 23:51

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 27 '15 at 20:10

3

The mistake you made is to mix up /media/samsung with ~/media/samsung notice the ~

The ~ sign refers to your home folder location for example /home/$USER/ when you stated ~/media/samsung you were actually typing /home/$USER/media/samsung

You could also use sudo chown paul:paul ./media/samsung the . means from current folder (or something like it) but this will set the ownership for the folder located at /home/$USER/media/samsung.

edited Jan 27 '15 at 20:10

Rinzwind

299,756

answered Jan 27 '15 at 19:56

elemer82

491
1
6
15

Thank you. I shall try it tomorrow evening. It's late here now. – Paul Davies Jan 27 '15 at 23:47
thank you. I am a little less frustrated today and looking forward to learning more – Paul Davies Jan 28 '15 at 20:34

No such file or directory when chown on newly created directory

1 Answers1