Change Permissions in Bulk?

[Husar]

It seems like for every bug you get in Windows that I don't get, I get one in Linux that you don't get. Then again networking in Windows can be a pain with the authorizations, atm it works fine for me but I've had some weird issues before.

Have you tried simply restarting to reset access settings? Did you touch any of the files earlier? Are you using an administrator account (I assume you are)?

[Lemur]

Have you tried simply restarting to reset access settings?

Do you mean a simple reboot? Um, isn't that the first thing you try for everything in Windows? I mean, when in doubt, you just reboot the thing.

Or are your referencing something else?

Did you touch any of the files earlier? Are you using an administrator account (I assume you are)?

What do you mean by "touch"? This was the bulk storage drive off my old PC. Since a big part of my job is writing videos, I keep copies of the final compressions on this drive. So ... yeah, I moved the drive, which had local permissions, which got blown to hell by the new machine, which I'm now trying to fix. Apparently my new local identity, LEMUR\CUBE, does not translate to my old local identity, LEMUR\UBERBOXEN.

Yeah, admin account, for all the good it does me.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Me I'm no friends with the Windows system admin tools. So I tend to just brute force these things using Linux instead, but then again I don't use Windows for anything needing even the pretense of security.

As root from the terminal simply copy the contents of the file to another file, delete old file in an attempt to get the contents of the file copied to a location which ACLs don't see. Do this for all files you care about, using something like

echo 'cp "$1" "backup-$1" && rm -f "$1"' > /tmp/force-my-way.sh
chmod +x /tmp/force-my-way.sh
find /media/path/to/volume -type -f -name '*.pattern' -exec sh /tmp/force-my-way-sh "{}" \;

Linux NTFS drivers may be smart enough not to touch ACLs but probably won't be smart enough to create new ACL misery for you. Be careful with the find command to only match the files you really want to touch, so it's probably best to execute the find query without the -exec part to verify that first.

Finally let Windows fsck the volume to make sure Windows NTFS drivers agree with the Linux ones on the state of the disk afterwards.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Also, if you have a non-gimped version of Windows you might have PowerShell. You could spend an evening's worth of research then pit yourself in a battle of wit and willpower against Windows.

[Xiahou]

I bet you need to seize ownership of the files. I used to come across this a lot when I used to have to support servers...
Right click -> Properties -> Security Tab -> Advanced button -> Owner tab -> click edit. And if you want to push it down thru the directory structure, click the appropriate check box.

After that, you should be able to set permissions without issue.