How to change ownership of folder / file in Nautilus.

just

Both outlined items are combo-boxes, from which it is possible to select any available user or group:

francois072

Mine does not give me the drop down menu when clicking on "root".
I also cannot erase "root" and replace it with my username.

just

francois072

How exactly Nautilus instance on your screenshot was started?

francois072

By typing "admin:///(location)" in address bar.

just

francois072

Try another way. I use (in terminal):

sudo dbus-launch nautilus

Don't close terminal window until (root) Nautilus window is closed. Even when it'll be closed, wait a few seconds until the command in terminal actually exits. Only after that you may exit the terminal.

francois072

just Is dbus-launch necessary?
I just used sudo nautilus

francois072

Got it working when I opened nautilus form the terminal as root

just

francois072 just Is dbus-launch necessary?
I just used sudo nautilus

Good question.

In Solus, I don't see any difference when a command is run with or without dbus-launch.

In many other distros a command run without dbus-launch doesn't work as expected.

So as dbus-launch doesn't hurt in Solus, I apply unified approach and use dbus-launch everywhere.

HPF-84E

francois072
Please correct your user rights of your home directory with sudo chown $USER:$USER $HOME
Please do not start graphical tools with Sudo from the terminal. This is a very bad idea for an X-Server.
😷

Justin

just open Nautilus as root

VERY DANGEROUS

just

Justin just open Nautilus as root

VERY DANGEROUS

Fully agree - when used unconsciously.

francois072

HPF-84E What is the correct way then to start Nautilus as root?
Or how to edit file ownership with nautilus.

Justin

francois072 Really file managers should ask you to elevate when you want to delete/modify/change ownership of a file so that the elevation only happens for that action. That makes it far safer than starting nautilus or any file manager as root and accidentally deleting or modifying a system file and breaking your system.

Dolphin actually prevents users starting it as root for this reason (until they can create a best practice way of elevating).

francois072

Justin I also used dolphin when I had Kde DE and installed a service menu to launch dolphin as root. I did this because sometimes I need the file manager to modify / delete a folder that is owned by root. I did some data recovery and the files I recovered had their ownership changed to root by testdisk.

darknetmatrix

there is a extension in the softwarecenter that's called nautilus-admin, after installing you can open a folder by right-clicking

synthsncats

darknetmatrix Looks like it's no longer there. :-/

just

Disabling launching dolphin, kate, kwrite, konqueror, systemsettings5 as root in Kde was a successful attempt to make users life harder.

All utilities still may be launched as root, without installing any addons, services, extensions. It is done by using pkexec instead of sudo.

Justin

just How dare they try to protect users from making mistakes and breaking their system!

just

Justin We all learn from our mistakes.

Justin

just But if the software can prevent you making that mistake, then you're generally better off.

just

Justin We went too far off-topic, aren't we 🙂 ? Pace e bene.