A quick Google search suggested it is possibly due to the fact that the Pi I received came with a pre-loaded OS which has been set to read only to extend the life and stability of the SD card. The problem is I can't seem to find any way to change this. My first thought was to buy another SD card and download the OS fresh. But if I don't need to buy a new card all the better.
That's unlikely.
TL;DR: only the root user can write to the boot partition. Others need to make use of sudo to gain elevated privileges.
The long version:
The boot partition is FAT. FAT doesn't support owner, group, and permissions. This means when it gets mounted (made available in the file tree) all users can read it and its contents but only the superuser (a.k.a. root) can write to it. Because FAT doesn't support them any attempt to change these will silently fail with no effect.
It's possible to change the permissions etc. but 1. that's not really recommended, and 2. means messing with /etc/fstab which, if you get it wrong, will stop your system from booting.
If you really want to try it see Using fstab A Beginner's Guide(No longer maintained. See EOLing My Guides). FAT is covered in 11.3
Statistics: Posted by thagrol — Thu Jan 01, 2026 3:58 pm