- This topic has 10 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated Apr 24-3:46 am by scruffyeagle.
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scruffyeagle
I’ve posted about this problem before, but I’ve lost track of where that post was. No solution was found. But, the problem still exists, so I’m creating a new post for it.
The problem is, I can’t make links to files. This problem exists in antiX19.4, antiX21, & antiX22. It tells me “operation not permitted”. But, NOTE I can still make links (shortcuts) for these files, in Windows 10, and also in a newly installed MX-21.3 KDE 64bit OS.
I’ve got my Dell Latitude laptop set up as a multiboot hard drive, including Windows 10, Swap, antiX19.4, MX-21.3 KDE 64 bit, and antiX22. However, IMO the best OS is antiX, and within antiX the best DE is IceWM with zzz-fm.
Here’s a description of my method for managing data files:
I keep all my data files on an external hard drive. This makes all my data available for any computer I happen to be using – as long as the current OS has VeraCrypt installed. It also makes sure that if a hard drive or an OS crashes, it will NOT wipe out my data.
The primary external drive get mirrored onto a backup external drive, using LuckyBackup.
The external hard drive is partitioned in a topical manner, so files of similar topic area get filed into the same partition. For example, all of the photos get filed into partition #6 (“p6”).
Each partition on the external hard drive gets encrypted, having its own unique password.
When I first started using this method, I was using TrueCrypt for encrypting the partitions. Eventually, TrueCrypt became obsolete, and the copies I had stashed away were no longer useful. At that point, I had to search for an alternate program. I found & switched to VeraCrypt, because it can manage TrueCrypt files & drives.
Note: zulucrypt wasn’t an option, because it can’t display the characters being typed in as the password – and, I’m not a perfect typist. If you can’t see what you’re typing, you can’t catch your mistakes. That forces the use of very short, and simple passwords – and, what good is that?
My problem of not being able to make links was a consequence of repartitioning the 1TB external hard drive. I needed to shuffle space between partitions, and then each one needed to be re-encrypted in its new size. So, I performed a backup, and repartitioned the drive. One by one, I re-encrypted the 8 partitions. Then, I needed to restock the partitions with data. I did this via a combination of direct copy/paste, and use of LuckyBackup.
I believe my inability to make links is caused by a change in the permissions & perhaps ownership of files on the external drive. I’m attaching screenshots of the info & permissions from one of the files.
Because the filenames & paths are unchanged, I didn’t realize right away that this problem existed. The previously made links on the IceWM desktop were still fully functional. That led to using LuckyBackup to backup files onto the backup external drive – so, the change of attributes got propagated into the backup drive. But then, I restructured my data files, and a vital file (my budgeting spreadsheet) got moved to a new location. That forced me to delete the previous desktop link, and try to replace it with a link using the new path – and, it wouldn’t work.
So, I have a suspicion as to why the inability to make links is happening, but I lack the expertise to fix it.
Here’s the output of inxi -Fxz, in my antiX19.4 OS:
——————————————————
spirit@antix194:~
$ inxi -Fxz
System:
Kernel: 4.9.0-264-antix.1-amd64-smp arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
v: 8.3.0 Desktop: IceWM v: 3.3.1
Distro: antiX-19.4_x64-full Grup Yorum 20 May 2021
base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Machine:
Type: Portable System: Dell product: Latitude E6400 v: N/A
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 0U692R serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Dell v: A34
date: 06/04/2013
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 76.4 Wh (102.0%) condition: 74.9/76.4 Wh (98.1%)
volts: 12.2 min: 11.1 model: Panasonic DELL FU44196 status: full
CPU:
Info: dual core model: Intel Core2 Duo P8600 bits: 64 type: MCP
arch: Penryn Yorkfield rev: A cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 3 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 800/2401 boost: enabled cores: 1: 800
2: 800 bogomips: 9575
Flags: ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Mobile 4 Series Integrated Graphics vendor: Dell
driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen5 bus-ID: 00:02.0
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.20.4 driver: X: loaded: intel gpu: i915
resolution: 1280×800~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel GM45 Express v: 2.1 Mesa 18.3.6
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k4.9.0-264-antix.1-amd64-smp running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Intel 82567LM Gigabit Network vendor: Dell driver: e1000e
v: 3.2.6-k port: efe0 bus-ID: 00:19.0
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Device-2: Intel WiFi Link 5100 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 0c:00.0
IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>
RAID:
Hardware-1: Intel 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci
v: 3.0 bus-ID: 00:1f.2
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.14 TiB used: 144.37 GiB (12.4%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MK2561GSYN size: 232.89 GiB
ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Western Digital
model: WD My Passport 0748 size: 931.48 GiB
ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: Toshiba model: TransMemory
size: 892.5 MiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 28.67 GiB used: 11.8 GiB (41.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 9.77 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
dev: /dev/sda3
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0 C mobo: N/A sodimm: SODIMM C
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 3027
Info:
Processes: 204 Uptime: 4h 25m Memory: 3.82 GiB used: 1.47 GiB (38.5%)
Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 Packages: 2163 Shell: Bash
v: 5.0.3 inxi: 3.3.19
spirit@antix194:~
$
—————————-
sybok
Could you try attempt to create the symbolic link with ‘ln’ and increased verbosity, i.e. ‘ln –verbose’?
Perhaps, that could give more information about the failure.If you think that is a reasonable course of action, you also try to change group, ownership and access rights recursively using ‘chgrp -R’, ‘chown -R’ and ‘chmod -R’.
If this does not help, then I do not know.
Could you try attempt to create the symbolic link with ‘ln’ and increased verbosity, i.e. ‘ln –verbose’?
Perhaps, that could give more information about the failure.If you think that is a reasonable course of action, you also try to change group, ownership and access rights recursively using ‘chgrp -R’, ‘chown -R’ and ‘chmod -R’.
If this does not help, then I do not know.
One things at a time… First, I tried to make the link. I used the following command:
ln -v ./"220404 - Current budgeting.ods" ./BudgetingThe return was:
“ln: failed to create hard link ‘./Budgeting’ => ‘./220404 – Current budgeting.ods’: Operation not permitted”Next, I’ll see what I can do with the chown, chgrp, & chmod” commands. As a matter of “KISS”, I’ll worry about making the changes recursive later. For the moment, I need to succeed with at least one solitary file.
For chmod, I read the manual page, and then used the command:
‘chmod -v a+rwx ./”220404 – Current budgeting.ods”‘The results was:
“mode of ‘./220404 – Current budgeting.ods’ changed from 0700 (rwx——) to 0777 (rwxrwxrwx)”Note: Checking the permissions dialog box for this file in zzz-fm, there was no change.
Tested making the link:
‘ln -v ./”220404 – Current budgeting.ods” ./Budgeting’The result was the same:
“ln: failed to create hard link ‘./Budgeting’ => ‘./220404 – Current budgeting.ods’: Operation not permitted”NOTE: Just to be sure, I repeated all of the above while logged into the terminal as root.
The results were precisely the same, including the claim that 0700 had changed to 0777. Therefore, even though the output claimed it had been changed the first time, it either had NOT been changed, or it was immediately changed back to 0700.
==================For chgrp, I used the command:
‘chgrp -v spirit “220404 – Current budgeting.ods”‘The result was:
“group of ‘220404 – Current budgeting.ods’ retained as spirit”
===========================For chown, I used the command:
‘chown -v spirit:spirit “220404 – Current budgeting.ods”‘The result was:
“ownership of ‘220404 – Current budgeting.ods’ retained as spirit:spirit”
==========================From all of the above, I deduce that the owner & group of the file is as it should be, but the attributes of rwx were NOT fixed to include group & others.
Note, that all of the files & directories on the drive have the same set of permissions right now, where only the use may read, write, or execute the files.
The only other thing I can think of at the moment, that could be obstructing link making, is if the entire drive was marked as read only – but if that was the case, then how could I be editing the files on the drive, &/or adding & removing files? (And yes, I can edit, add, & delete files.)
sybok
1) The file contains space and dash in it.
Please rename the file (using ‘detox’ utility or by hand) to something less wild and try again.
Or alternately, try to run the ‘ln’ command without double quotes but with the single “tick” instead.
Perhaps, the double quotes allowing for expansion and the presence of dash ‘-‘ in the name cause the problem.2) Could you please post
ls -lhd <directory where you want to create the symlink; location in your screenshot>
as well.
Also, is there any information on the drives in ‘/etc/fstab’ file (or output of ‘lsblk’ and others).3) Is it possible to write anything to the mounted drive(s)?
As synchronicity would have it, as soon as I started this thread, I finally received a reply on the previous post (which I’d lost track of).
So, I’m currently hopping back & forth between threads, trying to keep up with both.
The previous thread is:
Can’t make a link for the desktop1) The file contains space and dash in it.
Please rename the file (using ‘detox’ utility or by hand) to something less wild and try again.
Or alternately, try to run the ‘ln’ command without double quotes but with the single “tick” instead.
Perhaps, the double quotes allowing for expansion and the presence of dash ‘-‘ in the name cause the problem.2) Could you please post
ls -lhd <directory where you want to create the symlink; location in your screenshot>
as well.
Also, is there any information on the drives in ‘/etc/fstab’ file (or output of ‘lsblk’ and others).3) Is it possible to write anything to the mounted drive(s)?
Thanks for your reply. Here’s the results of me trying to make use of it:
========================
Creating a copy of the file named “Budgeting220404” didn’t work. The output was the same. Trying the ln command using ticks instead of quotes also didn’t work. No change in output.
======================
The veracrypt7 drive isn’t listed in /etc/fstab. At the start of the file, there’s the comment
“# Pluggable devices are handled by uDev, they are not in fstab”.
(veracrypt7 is the encrypted partition #7, on an external hard drive.)(I don’t know how to check uDev…)
=======================
lsblk returned this output:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 232.9G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 579M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 85.8G 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 9.8G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda4 8:4 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 29.3G 0 part
├─sda6 8:6 0 39.1G 0 part
└─sda7 8:7 0 35.2G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 180.7G 0 part
│ └─veracrypt1 254:0 0 180.7G 0 dm /media/veracrypt1
├─sdb2 8:18 0 220.7G 0 part
├─sdb3 8:19 0 180.7G 0 part
├─sdb4 8:20 0 1K 0 part
├─sdb5 8:21 0 160.2G 0 part
├─sdb6 8:22 0 70.3G 0 part
│ └─veracrypt6 254:1 0 70.3G 0 dm /media/veracrypt6
├─sdb7 8:23 0 40G 0 part
│ └─veracrypt7 254:2 0 40G 0 dm /media/veracrypt7
└─sdb8 8:24 0 78.9G 0 part
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom=============================
The output of ‘ls -lhd’ was:
“drwx—— 3 spirit spirit 16K Mar 26 01:13 .”sybok
Creating a copy of the file named “Budgeting220404” didn’t work.
Do you mean *copy* or *symlink*?
The former would (effectively) indicate you do not have write permission to the drive (although the output of ‘ls -l’ suggests it not be the case)?Creating a copy of the file named “Budgeting220404” didn’t work.
Do you mean *copy* or *symlink*?
The former would (effectively) indicate you do not have write permission to the drive (although the output of ‘ls -l’ suggests it not be the case)?I meant copy. I made a copy of the Budgeting spreadsheet, and then renamed the copy to call it “Budgeting220404”. That created a disposable copy not having the dash & spaces in the filename, for experimenting with. (Leaving the original copy unused & safe from accidental harm.) This was strictly to test the idea that the dash &/or spaces were interfering with making a link. I did my experimentation, with the copy still in the same directory that the original copy was in (/veracrypt7/Archive/Budgeting/Budgeting220404) It turned out, that the removal of the dash and spaces from the filename made no difference at all.
sybok
Damn. I’m running out of ideas. 🙁
I’ve reached the conclusion that the limitation on making links is limited strictly to zzzfm & spacefm, because Rox filer & Thunar can still make links without problems.
So, I’d like this thread marked as “Solved”. The solution is simple: I now use some other file manager, instead of zzzfm &/or spacefm, when I need to make links.
Thanks!
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