file-transferlinuxusb-flash-drive
How do I copy files from a USB flash drive in Ubuntu Linux from command line? When I copy these files from USB to a local folder I get "permissions denied" using the GUI.
On the command line I can use sudo, but how do I become a super user using the GUI?
Your flash drive is 2 GB in size. This is the maximum filesystem size supported by FAT16. As such, it is likely that it was formatted with the FAT16 filesystem from the factory.
Due to a technical limitation in the FAT16 filesystem, only a limited number of file entries may be stored into the root directory. This limit is set when the filesystem is formatted (source). Directory entries (which may include long filename information), but not the contents of directories, count towards this limit.
To solve this problem, convert the filesystem to FAT32. On Linux, it may simply be best to move all files to a temporary location, unmount the drive, reformat to FAT32 with mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sde1, and mount the drive and move the files back.
Best Answer
In Ubuntu, all USB drives, once mounted, are in the
/mediadirectoryThat copies a file on your USB disk to the user's home directory, assuming the drive is called
your-usband the file isfile-in-usb.I am not sure why you need permissions to copy from the USB to a local file. Maybe you don't have permission to access the USB or you are trying to copy them to a directory where you don't have permissions. I would do this to find the permissions of the files on the USB drive:
Post the result of this and the directory you are trying to copy the files to.
I don't recommend running the GUI file manager under super user privileges, but this but this is how you would launch Nautilus in root mode: