Changing file ownership in bulk

I recently had to reformat my harddrive. I restored all of my files from backup, but it seems that my file ownership permissions have been changed from

-rw-rw-r-- 1 jim jim

to

-rw-r–r-- 1 jim jim

In trying to use Unison to backup, I’m getting all kinds of error messages:

.PlayOnLinux — transport failure
• Error in creating directory:
Permission denied [mkdir(/home/backup1/.unison…PlayOnLinux.9995e789709e04532de6d6057c8f79f1.unison.tmp)]
.wine — transport failure
• Error in creating directory:
Permission denied [mkdir(/home/backup1/.unison…wine.9995e789709e04532de6d6057c8f79f1.unison.tmp)]
Calibre Library — transport failure
• Error in creating directory:
Permission denied [mkdir(/home/backup1/.unison.Calibre Library.9995e789709e04532de6d6057c8f79f1.unison.tmp)]
DOS — transport failure
• Error in creating directory:
Permission denied [mkdir(/home/backup1/.unison.DOS.9995e789709e04532de6d6057c8f79f1.unison.tmp)]
Desktop — transport failure
• Error in creating directory:
Permission denied [mkdir(/home/backup1/.unison.Desktop.9995e789709e04532de6d6057c8f79f1.unison.tmp)]
Documents — transport failure
• Error in creating directory:
Permission denied [mkdir(/home/backup1/.unison.Documents.9995e789709e04532de6d6057c8f79f1.unison.tmp)]

I think??? that the problem is caused by the changed file permissions. I have all kinds of files in my Home folder: pictures, programs, videos, documents, etc., etc. With this in mind, is there any way to do a bulk file permission reset so that Unison will backup my Home folder?

Is there an easy way to do this through Users and Groups?

Thanks, Jim

Open Caja as an administrator (one way to do this is to type "sudo caja" in a terminal). Navigate to and right-click the folder where you have all of the files and select the "permissions" tab:

Set all ownerships to yourself and click the "apply permissions to enclosed files" button.

3 Likes

Thanks Steve. I think I may have figured out why so many people are having a problem with Unison. My solution I’m going to post under a different name.

Thanks again,

Jim