Member Avatar for capton

I have Ubuntu 11.10 installed but recently i can't paste ANYTHING outside my root folder being it on an external drive or a different partition.
The 'paste' option actually becomes greyed out.
I warmly appreciate any help please.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by zeroliken

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For : a "Paste" item that’s enabled only inside the root folder but greyed out elsewhere usually points to ownership/mount issues, not a clipboard bug. Common causes are: the destination is not writable by your normal user, the filesystem (especially an external NTFS/vfat device) is mounted with options that force root ownership or read‑only access, or the kernel has remounted the device read‑only after encountering errors.

Quick diagnostics to run in a terminal (replace /path/to/target with the actual mount or folder):

id -un
ls -ld /path/to/target
df -h /path/to/target
mount
dmesg | tail -n 50

What to look for: ls -ld shows owner and permissions; if the owner is root and your user isn’t listed with write permission, write operations (Paste) will be disabled. df/mount show filesystem type and mount flags — look for ro (read‑only) or ntfs/vfat where ownership is controlled by mount options like uid=. dmesg will reveal kernel remounts or filesystem errors.

Typical remedies and cautions: if the files are yours, change ownership on that mount (only after confirming you understand the impact):

sudo chown -R $(id -un):$(id -un) /path/to/target    # use only on personal data

For NTFS/vfat external drives, use ntfs-3g or appropriate mount options (uid/gid) rather than attempting Unix permission changes. If the device was remounted read‑only due to errors, run the appropriate filesystem check (ext4: fsck, NTFS: ntfsfix) from a safe environment and back up data first.

As hinted, elevated GUI file managers can make files root‑owned — avoid running them as root routinely. Prefer correcting ownership/mount options or use sudo for individual terminal copy operations, and always back up before bulk chown/fsck work.

Member Avatar for zeroliken

that's strange usually its only the root folder where you can't tamper with the files manually

Does the shortcut key work or maybe the terminal command for copy paste work?

I suggest to first check the folder's properties if you have the right permissions like read and write
next try to run nautilus with administrator priveleges by
1. run dialog box by pressing Alt+F2
2. then type gksudo nautilus
...this is to check if you can copy paste any items on any folder

if this doesn't work you might be missing the packages for the paste, and might want to consider a clean reinstall but consider this a last resort

I'm not sure if there's another way so you may get better help on
there's alot of members there that's knowledgeable for ubuntu related problems

Edited by zeroliken
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