Transmission: permission denied on USB disk

I have Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC with a WD MyBook connected using USB. The drive is automatically mounted to /media/My Book. I have created a folder /media/My Book/downloads and I have set Trasmission's download directory to be /media/My Book/downloads.

When I try to download a file, Transmission says

Error: Permission denied (/media/My Book/downloads/The.Simpsons.S24E09.720p.HDTV.X264-DIMENSION [PublicHD]/The.Simpsons.S24E09.720p.HD

ls -la gives me

drwx------ 1 pi       0 Dec 15 16:24 downloads

So I guess the problem is that transmission runs under different user than pi and cannot write to the folder. However when I execute

chmod -R 777 downloads

the operations succeeds without any error but the permissions do not change, they stay 700 just for the owner.

What am I doing wrong and how can I enabled Transmission to write to that directory? It is a NTFS drive, df -T says

/dev/sda1  fusebulk

Igor Kulman

Posted 2013-01-07T21:43:12.020

Reputation: 195

Try chmod -R 777 downloads. – Scott – 2013-01-07T21:59:13.323

Hey Igor, I am just mentioning this in a comment since it is off topic of your request, but just a nudge as it sounds you're learning a ton! Double check your understanding of system permissions, "777" would be r/w/x for all Owner, Group AND Other (respectively). So the owner maintains "7" permissions (read, write, execute). Wikipedia has a good summary here.

– nerdwaller – 2013-01-07T21:59:41.150

@Scott tried that, it is in my post – Igor Kulman – 2013-01-07T22:01:14.847

@Igor - The location of -R is important. – nerdwaller – 2013-01-07T22:01:58.730

@nerdwaller I understand the permissions, I just do not know why it does not work. Maybe because it is a NTFS drive, some parameters for automounting must be set? As user Pi I have no problem writing to the dir (of coursem because oif the drwx) – Igor Kulman – 2013-01-07T22:02:34.050

2You order are arguments in typing the wrong the. – Scott – 2013-01-07T22:06:31.707

@nerdwaller no change, still 700 (drwx------) – Igor Kulman – 2013-01-07T22:06:46.793

Why not try on the one folder first, with sudo. sudo chmod 770 downloads See what happens. Then add the transmission user to your usergroup, whatever you're in. That is a little more secure. Otherwise, you can change the transmission user in the config files (here: /home/transmission/.config/transmission-daemon/settings.json). – nerdwaller – 2013-01-07T22:08:22.913

You are being very confusing. You say you are giving the output from ls –la, but I don’t see . and ... You say “the permissions … stay 777 just for the owner” (what does that mean?) but then later you say “still 700”. – Scott – 2013-01-07T22:15:00.937

@Scott I am giving just the relevant line of the listing for the downloads directory, not for the whole disk. Your are right, there was a error in my question, the permissions stay 700 after running chmod 777, and sudo chmod 777 – Igor Kulman – 2013-01-07T22:20:13.003

Try mounting the mybook elsewhere, to see if the problem persists. – nerdwaller – 2013-01-07T22:23:55.690

Transmission: permission denied on USB disk

Answers