Changing permissions via chmod at runtime errors with “Operation not permitted”

Question

When I use chmod() to change permissions at run time, it gives me the below message:

Warning: chmod() [function.chmod]: Operation not permitt

Answer 1

This is a tricky question.

There a set of problems about file permissions. If you can do this at the command line

$ sudo chown myaccount /path/to/file

then you have a standard permissions problem. Make sure you own the file and have permission to modify the directory.

If you cannnot get permissions, then you have probably mounted a FAT-32 filesystem. If you ls -l the file, and you find it is owned by root and a member of the "plugdev" group, then you are certain its the issue. FAT-32 permissions are set at the time of mounting, using the line of /etc/fstab file. You can set the uid/gid of all the files like this:

UUID=C14C-CE25  /big            vfat    utf8,umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000 0       1

Also, note that the FAT-32 won't take symbolic links.

Wrote the whole thing up at http://www.charlesmerriam.com/blog/2009/12/operation-not-permitted-and-the-fat-32-system/