chown: changing ownership not permitted, even though running as root

I managed to configure my Raspberry Pi as an FTP server with ProFTPD. The only problem is, I can´t upload and rename files and Windows Explorer says:

350 File or directory exists,ready for destination name
550 Rename xyz permission denied

Now I´ve read I have to chown this folder to the FTP user, but this does not work.

I have tried:

sudo chown -R pi /var/www (my default pi account)
sudo chown -R piftp /var/www (the ftp account)

sudo su
chown -R root /var/www

All I´m getting is

chown:changing ownership of ... : Operation not permitted

I already chmodded this directory to 777.

/var/www is mounted from a vfat volume on my external hard disc. Looking at it with ls -l I see all files and folders have owner root and group root and all of these folders have permissions drwxr-xr-x.

Can someone please help?

Marian Klühspies

Posted 2014-03-22T14:15:16.720

Reputation: 151

2What is the current owner of the folder? – Ramhound – 2014-03-22T15:10:46.403

The owner of www is pi – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-22T15:26:09.933

Are you able to sudo other commands that normally require it. Its almost like the root doesn't even exist. – Ramhound – 2014-03-22T19:10:43.030

yes I am, I was also able to change the root password – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-23T02:29:57.583

What does ls -l give for the failing file or folder? And your "All I'm getting is chown:changing ownership of ... : Operation not permitted" applies to all files and folders, right? Or do some succeed? If some do succeed, is the file or folder that is failing any special? Like maybe that is a file that has been uploaded by Windows Explorer with some temporary name? – Arjan – 2014-03-23T07:59:40.560

Which OS are you running on your Raspberry Pi? And what file system? (For that /var/www folder.) And maybe specifying the group is required in the chown command too? – Arjan – 2014-03-23T08:06:12.997

ls -l gives me root root for all folders/files. if I´m root, im not getting the permission error. the rights of these folders are drwxr-xr-x. I´m running raspbian, the file system of my external hdd which is mounted in /var/www is vfat. No it´s no file or folder from windows explorer as the upload is not permitted :( – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-23T10:13:02.267

I've rolled back your edit; please note we're not a forum. (That's not different from Stack Overflow, which you've used a lot.) If you have additional questions, then post a new question for that. Of course, first search, as it might have been asked before. – Arjan – 2014-03-23T12:01:32.600

possible duplicate of Can't change permission/ownership/group of external hard drive on Ubuntu

– Arjan – 2014-03-23T12:02:07.913

I am going to have to roll back this question myself also. If you have resolved it yourself post an answer, don't post the solution in the question, thats not how this website works. – Ramhound – 2014-03-23T13:23:12.213

Answers

I don't think VFAT supports the type of permissions you're trying to set. In such case, the permissions are set the same for all files, when mounting the disk. Something like:

sudo mount -t vfat -o uid=piftp,gid=piftp /dev/sda1 /var/www

See also Can't change permission/ownership/group of external hard drive on Ubuntu here on Super User, or the external resource Connect your Raspberry Pi to a USB hard disk.

Arjan

Posted 2014-03-22T14:15:16.720

Reputation: 29 084

no effect at all, tried everything of those examples – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-23T11:15:44.210

Surely the output of ls -l must be different when you mount the drive like above, @Nachbar90? – Arjan – 2014-03-23T11:42:11.503

the output for the mounted hdd is drwxr-xr-x 15 piftp piftp – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-23T11:46:57.837

Sounds like me that your "chown: changing ownership not permitted" has been answered then? – Arjan – 2014-03-23T11:59:47.910

yes but not my real problem. The hdd is mounted as read only I think. The command for mounting it as rw is just giving me the mount infotable – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-23T12:02:25.980

See my comment to your question, about the rollback. And please read http://superuser.com/about Success!

– Arjan – 2014-03-23T12:03:08.193

Now I´m as wise as before. Still no chance to get my ftp working – Marian Klühspies – 2014-03-23T12:15:52.800

Then just go ahead and ask another question about that (if it has not been asked before). Your own title for this question was "chown: changing ownership not permitted". By now you know that this was related to using an external drive, and how to set the ownership for external drives, so make sure you add that information to any new question you ask. Don't ask chameleon questions please. Success!

– Arjan – 2014-03-23T12:38:13.287

OP wrote:

I solved my ftp problem by mounting with umask 0000

Kevin Panko

Posted 2014-03-22T14:15:16.720

Reputation: 6 339