You do not have the permissions necessary to save the file.

[expozen]

I am soooooooooo tired of making changes to some file in gedit, pressing the save button, and having the thing refuse to save it because I don't have permission. How difficult is to ask for my password instead of just downright denying me. It's like, "Sorry you made those changes without doing a full investigation of who can do what, when, where, why and how, before opening that file you need to modify. Now you get to jump through five hoops to get back to even."

[nitstorm]

try "man chmod" in the terminal, see what permissions u want to give ur file and then do so by the terminal

chmod (whatever permission ) location of the file


but highly advisable to not edit the system files if you dont know what u are doing 100%

hope that was useful, cheers!

[konqueror7]

what file is that your editing?

use 'sudo' to open the editor,

sudo gedit myfile.txt

[expozen]

try "man chmod" in the terminal, see what permissions u want to give ur file and then do so by the terminal

Yeah, I'm thinking about maybe, "chmod -R 777 /"

[FuturePilot]

what file is that your editing?

use 'sudo' to open the editor,

sudo gedit myfile.txt

It's better to use "gksudo" for graphical applications http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/graphicalsudo

I would advise against changing permissions of system files. If you need to edit a system file use gksudo for a GUI editor or sudo if you're using a command line editor. Changing the permissions can break things and leave your system vulnerable.

[expozen]

If you need to edit a system file use gksudo for a GUI editor or sudo if you're using a command line editor.

sudo and gksudo have a major flaw: You need to know, ahead of time, that you're going to need sudo or gksudo before you do whatever it is that you're going to do.

[FuturePilot]

sudo and gksudo have a major flaw: You need to know, ahead of time, that you're going to need sudo or gksudo before you do whatever it is that you're going to do.

Just about any time you edit a file that is not in /home/$USER you're going to need to use gksudo/sudo.

[expozen]

Just about any time you edit a file that is not in /home/$USER you're going to need to use gksudo/sudo.

I shouldn't have to worry about things like that. If gedit knows I don't have the permissions to save the file, why can't gedit ask me for my password, then supply the given password to sudo to save the file itself. Why do I have to hold the things hand to make sure it doesn't trip over it's own feet?

[FuturePilot]

I shouldn't have to worry about things like that. If gedit knows I don't have the permissions to save the file, why can't gedit ask me for my password, then supply the given password to sudo to save the file itself. Why do I have to hold the things hand to make sure it doesn't trip over it's own feet?

Ah, now I see. That would be a nice feature. I would imagine it could be implemented with PolicyKit. No one has do so though

[Sarmacid]

I'm guessing this hasn't been done because allowing an program to escalate privileges would introduce a lot of vulnerabilities. However gedit allows for plugins, so maybe there's one for that task or if not you could write your own.