How to change ownership of folder / file in Nautilus.

francois072

I need to change the ownership of some files with Nautilus.

Monsieur_Caillou

francois072 I think you better take a look at the chown command in your terminal instead of trying to use nautilus for this task.

just

francois072

open Nautilus as root
right click on the item
select Properties from popup menu
select Permissions tab in the Properties dialog
select new Owner and|or Group for selected item
click Change Permissions for Enclosed Files... button if you want to do that for folder's content

Terminal command is simpler:

sudo chown -cR newuser:newgroup /1st/tmp

downhill

Monsieur_Caillou As much as I use the terminal, using a file manager is much easier for this scenario. I especally like using the Double Commander file manager for changing file and folder ownership.

francois072

I don't have a problem with the terminal but I would prefer to use Nautilus for this task.
Think I solved it.
I typed "admin///" in the navigation bar and that gave me root privileges. So then I changed the folder's permissions so that anyone can write/read.

francois072

just I opened Nautilus as root but in the permissions tab I can't change the owner/ group.

Justin

just open Nautilus as root

VERY DANGEROUS

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.
😷

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. :-/