Issue Overview
While working on a Python project in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) with Ubuntu, I faced an issue where I couldn't save changes to a file (app.py
) using Notepad++ or even IDLE.
Subsystem path: \\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu\home\atif\tts-app
Error in Notepad++
When trying to save, the following message appeared:
Save failed
Please check whether the network where the file is located is connected.
Error in IDLE
In IDLE, the error was clearer:
Permission denied
This suggested that it might be a file ownership or permission issue.
Investigation and Debugging
To debug the issue, I opened the WSL terminal and navigated to the project folder:
cd ~/tts-app
ls -l
Here’s the output:
total 48
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 16:06 __pycache__
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4210 Jul 9 16:04 app.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif 4210 Jul 9 16:04 app.py.bak
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 9 16:03 backupCode
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 12288 Jul 10 12:11 logs
drwxr-xr-x 3 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 15:42 static
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 9 15:41 templates
drwxr-xr-x 6 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 14:29 venv
As you can see, app.py
and the backupCode
directory were owned by root, not by the current user atif
. This is why the file couldn’t be modified from regular editors like Notepad++ or IDLE — because they don’t run with root privileges.
Solution: Change File Ownership
To fix this, I changed the ownership of all files and folders inside the current directory to my user (atif
) using the chown
command:
sudo chown -R atif:atif .
After running this command, I verified again with ls -l
:
total 56
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 16:06 __pycache__
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif 4210 Jul 9 16:04 app.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif 4211 Jul 10 13:37 app.py.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 atif atif 4210 Jul 9 16:04 app.py.bak.bak
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 16:03 backupCode
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 12288 Jul 10 12:11 logs
drwxr-xr-x 3 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 15:42 static
drwxr-xr-x 2 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 15:41 templates
drwxr-xr-x 6 atif atif 4096 Jul 9 14:29 venv
Now all files are correctly owned by atif
, and I was finally able to save them through both Notepad++ and IDLE without any errors.
Final Notes
-
This issue typically occurs when files or directories are created or copied using
sudo
or another tool that assigns ownership toroot
. -
Always check file permissions using
ls -l
when you encounter saving or editing issues in WSL. -
Use
chown
carefully — make sure you understand which directory you're applying it to.
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