gksudo nautilus won't let me change permissions of a folder owned by root

Question

I recently installed and mounted a second hard drive. This second hard drive uses VMPlayer to run Windows. I am able to run VMPlayer, but only if I launch it with gksudo vmplayer.

It's clearly a permission issue that prevents me from running it from the menu icon. I tried modifying the folder permissions of /media/ssd by switching the root user and applying chown. The error Operation not permitted appears.

I also tried using gksudo nautilus, which (not surprisingly) gives me the same error message.

I don't believe it's relevant, but I'm getting these error messages upon launching nautilus.

(nautilus:6290): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to register client:
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name
org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files
Initializing nautilus-dropbox 2015.10.28 ^C
root@osr-ubuntu1:/media/ssd# gksudo nautilus

(gksudo:6471): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS
daemon: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-m8iOpaGhDR: Connection
refused GConf Error: No D-BUS daemon running


(gksudo:6471): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS
daemon: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-m8iOpaGhDR: Connection
refused GConf Error: No D-BUS daemon running


(gksudo:6471): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS
daemon: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-m8iOpaGhDR: Connection
refused GConf Error: No D-BUS daemon running


(gksudo:6471): GConf-WARNING **: Client failed to connect to the D-BUS
daemon: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-m8iOpaGhDR: Connection
refused GConf Error: No D-BUS daemon running


(gksudo:6471): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_value_free: assertion 'value
!= NULL' failed

(nautilus:6476): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to register client:
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name
org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files

How can I change the directory permissions if even root isn't allowed to change it?

EDIT

I tried following the suggestion at External hard drive not allowing permission. When I run the line

sudo chattr +i immutable

I get the error

chattr: Inappropriate ioctl for device while reading flags on immutable

What does that mean?

This is not a duplicate of the NTFS/FAT32 question. My partition type is vfat.

"vfat" is the name of Linux' driver for FAT file systems incl. FAT32. So, yes, this question is a duplicate of the linked question. — David Foerster, Feb 02 '17 at 15:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

I solved the problem by remounting the hard drive. Zanna posted a thread that pointed me in the right direction. That thread's suggestion of changing fstab lead to a two hour nightmare where my machine wouldn't boot.

Once I discovered the relevant Ubuntu documentation, I was able to use this line for my vfat partition in /etc/fstab.

/dev/sda5 on /media/mynewdrive type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,flush)

gksudo nautilus won't let me change permissions of a folder owned by root

1 Answers1