Unable to save file: Permission denied Ubuntu

Question

With the help of a YouTube tutorial, I am working on my first MEAN stack project. So far, I have created index.html, server.js and package.json files. When I installed Mongoose and Body-Parser using terminal, my package.json file stored in Documents showed updated dependencies for package.json like

{
"name": "njnjn",
"version": "0.0.1",
"dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.15.2",
    "express": "^4.14.0",
    "mongoose": "^4.7.5"
  }
}

but I did not see updated dependencies on Atom which had something like

{
"name": "njnjn",
"version": "0.0.1",
"dependencies": {
    "express": "^4.14.0"
  }
}

So, I could not see the updated dependencies for Mongoose and body-parser on the package.json. I'm working on in Atom but I could see the updated dependencies for mongoose and body-parser on package.json in Documents.

I want the dependencies to be updated on both files: the one in Documents and the one I'm editing in Atom (I thought those files were supposed to be the same)

Also, when I tried saving my package.json on Atom(one without updated dependencies for Mongoose and body-parser), an error message popped up saying "Unable to save file: Permission denied." I don't think this error is associated with Atom only because I could not save my package.json file on Sublime as well.

How do I solve this problem so that dependencies for mongoose and body-parser will be updated on the package.json file in my text editor. And how can I save my package.json file on my text editor?

I tried searching everywhere for solution and saw a similar problem on Stack overflow for which the best solution told "to temporarily become root and edit the file:

sudo atom /path/to/file"

Because I'm new to Ubuntu, programming and command line, I did not understand the solution. Could you guys please help me?

Answer 1

"Permission denied" means that your current user have not the authentication to change the file. Only the owner of the files and root have the authentication to change them in default. sudo+command means you will use root's authentication. This requires that your current user is in 'root' user group(That also means that your current user is in sudoers).

You can get more help here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo

By the way, you are the owner of /home/yourUserName in default. Maybe your file should be created there?

Answer 2

you can set the permissions recursively.

sudo chmod -R 777 your file path

e.g.

sudo chmod -R 777 /path/to/file

for more information click on this link

Answer 3

This error occurs because of the following problem 1:- Those folders do you want to save your file is private that's why they say access denied For salve, this problem follow the command

---

1 :- $ sudo su

2:- Go on that folder you want to save for example

$ cd Desktop

3:- $ chown -v user-name /foldername

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