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I wrote a small program that calculates the Fibonacci sequence in the C programming language and wanted to move the fibo.c file to my regular C drive. I wrote it using Nano in Ubuntu running on the Windows Subsystem for Linux. When I try using the cp command to copy the file to /mnt/c which is where my C drive is, I get the error:

"cp: cannot create regular file 'mnt/c/fibo.c': Permission denied"

Does anyone know how to circumvent this?

Note: I also tried using sudo cp as well.

5 Answers5

43

Does seem like an older issue, but might prove useful for others: I find the easiest way to achieve file copies from WSL to windows without having to struggle with permissions is as follows:

1) Open "File explorer"

2) Connect to your running WSL instance just like you would connect to a network drive: --> Enter \\wsl$\< WSL_Distro > in the address bar

3) Browse your WSL folder structure ;)

enter image description here

From here you can copy your Linux files, and paste them on your windows folders. Do note that I do not recommend that you copy file from windows to WSL using this method.

If you want to copy to WSL, Best use the "/mnt/" method!

Ramhound
  • 44,080
10

The Widnows is mounted at this location

/mnt/c/Users/[Username]/..

Just copy the files to this location.

TonyParker
  • 201
  • 2
  • 2
5

Maybe this will work for you:

  1. Copy the file you want to share
  2. Open ubuntu bash
  3. Type explorer.exe . in ubuntu bash
  4. Paste the files
Toto
  • 19,304
Himanshu
  • 151
0

You do not have permissions to move the file:

Check the permissions by doing:

ls -l

If the above says root this means that the superuser sudo has the access.

You can elevate your permissions by prefixing sudo before your command

sudo cp ~/fibo.c /mnt/c/fibo.c'
navarq
  • 111
0

check permission: ls -l

make it read and write for other users: sudo chmod 666 <file_name>

copy from WSL Linux and paste to windows any other folder