When I tried to move file using:
mv -v file /mnt/D/mail
I got the following error message:
mv: preserving ownership for '/mnt/D/mail/file': Operation not permitted.
What ownership change do I have to make to enable this operation?
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Are you trying to move a file to e.g. a FAT partition? I suspect that your /mnt/D is a Windows drive. In this case, the problem is that the target file system does not support file ownership information. So the chown command that mv is trying to execute does fail. Did the file actually get moved to the target directory?
Some background: The move command is kind of a rename, where the source and target don't have to be on the same partition. If the file stays on the same partition, it's not even "moved". The move is performed by kind of pointing a different directory entry to the same content on the disk because of that, the ownership and the permissions stay the same. If you go across partition boundaries, the mv command mimics what it would do if it would stay on the same partition. So the permissions and the ownership has to be applied to the target file. What the move command does is this:
- copy the file to the target directory
- apply ownership, group membership and permissions to the new file
- remove the original file
The second step fails, so it's possible that you will find the file in the target directory. But it's also possible that mv will remove the target if something goes wrong. As far as I know, mv does not have a "force" switch, so your only fallback may be to use what shivsa suggested: copy and remove the source.
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by: shivsaPosted on 2004-02-06 at 15:21:24ID: 10295099
Have you tried just cp and then rm the source file? It sounds like it's trying to move the permissions too.