Ubuntu – Permission denied Error while copying

permissions

I am trying to copy a file from my Download directory to my Desktop directory; but I am getting the Permission Denied Error. Directory and file permissions doesn't restrict me from copying (Directory perm: 755 , file perm:- 664).

sockets@ankit:~$ ls -ld D
Desktop/   Documents/ Downloads/ 
sockets@ankit:~$ ls -ld Downloads/ Desktop/ 
drwxr-xr-x 9 sockets sockets 4096 Jan  4 12:52 Desktop/
drwxr-xr-x 3 sockets sockets 4096 Jan 10 16:24 Downloads/
sockets@ankit:~$ ls -l Downloads/Ankit.pdf 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sockets sockets 96170 Jan 10 16:24 Downloads/Ankit.pdf
sockets@ankit:~$ cp Downloads/Ankit.pdf Desktop/Ankit.pdf
cp: cannot create regular file `Desktop/Ankit.pdf': Permission denied

Any ideas why I would be getting the permission error. I know I can use sudo to copy the file.

———-EDIT -1

sockets@ankit:/var/log$ df -i
Filesystem       Inodes  IUsed    IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       2501856 228878  2272978   10% /
udev             755379    510   754869    1% /dev
tmpfs            757578    431   757147    1% /run
none             757578      3   757575    1% /run/lock
none             757578      8   757570    1% /run/shm
/dev/sda6      27639808  37521 27602287    1% /home/mount

———-EDIT 2

sockets@ankit:~$ df -h | grep /dev/sd
/dev/sda1        38G  8.5G   28G  24% /
/dev/sda6       416G   87G  308G  22% /home/mount
/dev/sdc1        16G  2.1G   14G  14% /media/New Volume
sockets@ankit:~$ mount | grep /dev/sd
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sda6 on /home/mount type ext4 (rw)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/New Volume type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000,gid=1000,shortname=mixed,dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush,uhelper=udisks)

Best Answer

Here's another scenario that would cause the problem

chris@chris-desktop:~$ sudo cp Downloads/Ankit.pdf Desktop/Ankit.pdf
[sudo] password for chris: 
chris@chris-desktop:~$ ls -l Desktop/Ankit.pdf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 19769 Jan 11 05:52 Desktop/Ankit.pdf
chris@chris-desktop:~$ cp Downloads/Ankit.pdf Desktop/Ankit.pdf
cp: cannot create regular file `Desktop/Ankit.pdf': Permission denied

In this case I already created a file in the destination directory with sudo so that it was owned by root. The file can not be overwritten by a normal cp command as user and results in a 'Permiision denied' error.

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