Windows WSL Ubuntu sees wrong permissions on files in mounted disk

I recently installed WSL on my Win 10 (Version 10.0.17134.228) and I'm trying to access my files on a disk mounted on windows from linux.

In my PC I have 2 HD:

1. First Disk: A single partition where windows is installed (C:/ in Windows)
2. Second Disk: It has 2 partitions
   1. A partition which contains Ubuntu (for dual boot)
   2. An NTFS partition which just contains data (D:/ in Windows)

When I work from windows or Ubuntu (the dual boot one) I access the data from the D:/ partition.

Now I wanted to access the data in the D:/ partition from WSL, but it tells me I don't have permissions

When I ls in the directory I see

mypc@DESKTOP-1CEE3H9:/$ ls -la /mnt/d/mypath/child/
total 36
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 4096 Jun 2 19:54 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 4096 Aug 18 00:52 ..
---------- 1 myuser myuser 1884 Dec 27 2017 myfile1
d--x--x--x 1 myuser myuser 4096 Jun 24 23:29 myfolder1

And in the parent path I see

mypc@DESKTOP-1CEE3H9:/$ ls -la /mnt/d/mypath/
total 180
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 4096 May 21 2017 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 4096 Aug 24 22:59 ..
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 4096 Aug 13 2015 myfolder2
d--x--x--x 1 myuser myuser 4096 Sep 24 2015 myfolder3
-rwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 268 Jan 19 2015 myfile2

In contrast, in the C:/ partition I see

mypc@DESKTOP-1CEE3H9:/$ ls -la /mnt/c/Users/MyUser/Desktop/
total 505276
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 512 Aug 20 23:12 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 512 Aug 18 01:07 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 1604 Jun 17 15:47 myfile3
drwxrwxrwx 1 myuser myuser 512 Mar 31 13:16 myfolder4

On windows I can access all of those files. In WSL I can access myfolder2, myfolder4 and I can read myfile2, myfile3. I can not access myfile1, myfolder1, myfolder3.

My partitions are

C: on /mnt/c type drvfs (rw,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000)
D: on /mnt/d type drvfs (rw,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000)

I don't understand why the permissions on the files are different on the disk. Might it be because I create/edit some of them from Ubuntu (dual boot) and some from Windows?

How can I fix the problem so that I can access the files?

I did not try chmod the disk because it is big, I don't want to risk breaking any file and it sounds to me like that would fix the symptoms and not the root cause of the permission problems.

Thanks

---

Edit

Following Biswapriyo comment I looked better into two files which I can and cannot access.

I checked the file Properties, and under the Detail tab I saw that the owner of the 2 files is different:

• The file I can access has owner DESKTOP-1CEE3H9\MyUser
• The file I cannot access has owner Administrators

I also checked another file I can access, and this one has as owner a long sequence of numbers and letters.

I tried changing the owner of one file from Administrators to DESKTOP-1CEE3H9\MyUser and it looks like I now see the right permissions in WSL.

Could this be related?

4

3 Answers

I noticed the owner of the file on Windows was "Administrators".

I changed that to be my user following this link and WSL started giving the appropriate permissions.

To summarize the steps here:

Left click -> "Properties" Option -> "Security" Tab -> "Advanced" Button -> "Change" button next to "Owner" -> In the input field write your user name and press "Check Names" button

Then press Ok until you close all the windows

I'm still not sure why I could access them in Windows but not on WSL.

1

Workaround:

Type sudo chmod a+rwx /path/to/file into the terminal, replacing /path/to/file with the file you want to give permissions to everyone for, and press Enter

You can also use the command sudo chmod -R a+rwx /path/to/folder to give permissions to a folder and every file and folder inside it. Omit the x from either command if you don’t want the files to be executable.

source:

I don't have any "Security" tab in my case, but I think I figured out the problem.

In my case, I wanted to add a repository through GitHub Desktop and when prompted for the location I just created a folder without thinking. That was it, permissions were screwed up.

In short, don't create / modify anything inside the Linux file system through Windows, use only the Linux terminal.

You can always add the repository to your software of choice afterwards.

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