I have a folder which I wish to copy from my Macbook Air (OSX 10.10.5) onto a USB attached hard disk. When I try to copy the folder, some files are copied, then the copy aborts with the message: The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access “PT3 Summary and Comments SM358 TMA01.htm”. If I just copy that file alone, I am asked to enter my password, and then the file is copied successfully.
The permissions for (me) are read/write for the file, and for the source and target folders. Any idea why I can't copy the whole folder?
Best Answer
This problem may occur because of wrong ownership. Try to run following command to change ownership for your user:
In this example,
sudo
will give you needed permissions to perform operation,chown
is a command to change ownership,-R
will make operation recursive against target folder,$(id -un)
is your current user name$(id -gn)
is your current group name,path_to_your_directory
shold be a path to folder you want to fix ownership.