( Solved ) Can't change folder and file permissions

[Danbor]

Hello all. Pulling my hair out here trying to work with folders and files.
I had to reinstall Mint Victoria. After the reinstall, I copied and pasted, from another computer on my home network, several hundred files to the new install. Ie, I copied all the files in the Documents folder to the Documents folder on the new install. Same with the usual, Pictures to Pictures, Music to Music, etc.
I tried to use one of those copied pictures as a desktop background. No go. When I click on the other places button all the files in the Pictures folder are greyed out. So, I opened file manager, as root, and tried to change permissions and share the folder. Mind you, I logged in as root.
Now, when I try to create the share, I get the error message " 'net usershare' returned error 255:net usershare add: failed to add share desktop. Error was operation not permitted". I get this with every folder.
Please. What am I missing?

 

[dos2unix]

Normally that is a samba error.
Are you running Samba?

 

[Danbor]

Yes. Upon thinking about it, I copied those files to this OS. And this OS doesn't have a listed owner. So it doesn't know what the permissions were when they were copied.
I just don't know how to fix that.

 

[dos2unix]

Is there a user at all? If not create one.
Then change the owner of all the files to that owner.
You can change the permissions later. The owner is what matters.

 

[Danbor]

I use SSH for file sharing, do I even need Samba? I've never had to add a user or group before. I don't recall ever installing or enabling samba but a search in file manager lists lots of entries for it.

 

[camtaf]

From my very basic trial with network file sharing, you have to 'export' the directories/files that you want to share.

 

[Danbor]

Ok, got it working. But I don't know how.
The files are shared now, I can access them. But when I look in file manager, some of them are not showing as shared.
My guess is that they are shared by SSH, but not samba, so the gui show's them as not shared, or shareable as the sharing option in the drop down menu on right click, as well the folder sharing box to enable the share are part of the samba package and unrelated to SSH.

 

[Condobloke]

Ok, got it working. But I don't know how.

Well done !!....(been there, done that, myself.)