terminal commands to change ownership & permissions from root to my user name/group aren't working even though I get a confirmation that they were changed.

[John McMillan]

Need to change file ownership & permissions from root to my user/group (john/john). Using the test file Augustine.doc, I issue the command in terminal:

sudo chown john:john Augustine.doc

No error message returned but checking properties of the file it still is shown as root.

I then try it as root by entering su, the root passwork, and then entering the following command:

root@johndesk:~# chown -c john:john /media/C:/"Documents and Settings"/John/"My Documents"/Word/John/Augustine.doc

to which I receive the following confirmation -
changed ownership of `/media/C:/Documents and Settings/John/My Documents/Word/John/Augustine.doc' to john:john

However, again the properties/permissions tab of the file show owner & group as both root along with the footnote "You are not the owner; so you cannot change these permissions.".

Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid)
Kernel 2.6.32-24-generic (#41-Ubuntu SMP Thu Aug 19 01:38:40 UTC 2010)
GNOME 2.30.2 (Ubuntu 2010-06-25)
GCC version 4.4.3 (x86_64-linux-gnu)
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+, 2G memory

Expectation - ownership/permission of file Augustine.doc would be changed from root to john/john
What happened - confirmation message said it changed. Actual ownership/permission of the file as reported by file properties remain unchanged as root.

[Jason J. Herne (hernejj)]

Hi John,
Thank you for taking the time to share your bug report.

You seem to be trying to change the permissions on a file that lives on a Windows partition. Windows usually uses the NTFS file system. NTFS uses a permission/ownership model that is not really compatible with the Unix/Linux methods for permission/ownership.

Here is a link that explains the situation somewhat, and offers a potential solution: http://askubuntu.com/questions/11840/how-to-chmod-on-an-ntfs-partition

Since this is not really a bug you might want to search or ask about this in the Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/.

Thank you again, and good luck :)