Need help with permissions for file recovery

General Linux Question
#1

Hello

I’m currently in a live environment (Fedora 35, KDE Plasma) and trying to back up some files on a USB, but I can’t delete from or format said USB. I don’t really understand permissions and would really appreciate some help.

[liveuser@localhost-live Kingstonusb]$ ls -l
total 104
-rw-rw-r–. 1 unbound unbound 20767 Mar 1 13:16 ‘Cloud.png’
drwxrwxrwx. 6 unbound unbound 36864 Apr 30 19:43 Downloads
drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Feb 28 14:22 lost+found
drwxrwxr-x. 4 unbound unbound 4096 Mar 1 17:37 Photos
drwxrwxr-x. 2 unbound unbound 4096 Mar 1 18:42 ‘Game saves’
drwxrwxr-x. 7 unbound unbound 4096 Mar 1 14:48 New
drwxrwxr-x. 5 unbound unbound 4096 Feb 26 19:41 files
-rw-rw-r–. 1 unbound unbound 4300 Mar 1 16:11 ‘Unsaved Document 1’

#2

Greetings. :wave:

Are you trying to delete anything from the live environment?

#3

I’m not trying to delete anything from the bootable linux USB, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m trying to delete files from a different USB.

#4

I see.

Could you try something along these lines?

#5

Thank you for the suggestions but it’s not quite what I was looking for. It’s on me for not explaining my problem clearly enough though.

After a bit more research It turned out the problem wasn’t really to do with permissions but with ownership. I used sudo chown user:group -R <folder> so sudo chown liveuser:liveuser -R Kingstonusb in this case (-R so that the command applies to sub-folders as well).

I expected having to change it again from liveuser to alexel after reinstalling, but no, it changed automatically I guess (This is still a bit foreign to me).

Thanx again for taking the time to reply and sorry for taking so long to post back.

1 Like