I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.

On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:
> I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
> have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
> editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
> ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
> operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.

This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file system
does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel has to fudge
it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the simple reason that
they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they are owned by root with
MODE 755 or some such.

If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some likely
named option.

If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask
options to mount in column 4. Full details in the man page, under section
"fat"


--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:
>
>> I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
>> have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
>> editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
>> ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
>> operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.
>>
>
> This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file system
> does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel has to fudge
> it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the simple reason that
> they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they are owned by root with
> MODE 755 or some such.
>
> If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some likely
> named option.
>
What config file would this be? Can I find it in the handbook?
> If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask
> options to mount in column 4. Full details in the man page, under section
> "fat"
>
>
>
I need to interact with university computers from time to time, any
other file system with proper permissions, to be used under both linux
and windows (without additional drivers)?

Discovered something: if the usb flash drive is mounted with nautilus,
there is no problem with permissions. If mounted from within console,
and mounted to /mnt/disk, issues with permissions begin.

ubiquitous1980 wrote:

Alan McKinnon wrote:


On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:



I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.



This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file system
does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel has to fudge
it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the simple reason that
they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they are owned by root with
MODE 755 or some such.

If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some likely
named option.



What config file would this be? Can I find it in the handbook?


If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask
options to mount in column 4. Full details in the man page, under section
"fat"





I need to interact with university computers from time to time, any
other file system with proper permissions, to be used under both linux
and windows (without additional drivers)?





I don't use these so I am by no means saying they work well.

sys-fs/ntfs3g

sys-fs/ntfsprogs

I have read that the first one works pretty well but no first hand
knowledge if it is true or not. You may want to read this as well.


http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php

You may just want to test this with something not so important for a bit
and see how well this works for you.


Dale

:-) :-)

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:51:32 +0800, ubiquitous1980 wrote:

> Discovered something: if the usb flash drive is mounted with nautilus,
> there is no problem with permissions. If mounted from within console,
> and mounted to /mnt/disk, issues with permissions begin.
>

If you mount it in a console, are you doing so as root? Mount it as your
normal user with pmount, which will give you ownership of all
files on the drive.


--
Neil Bothwick

When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space.
-- Murphy's Computer Laws n°3

On Monday 08 March 2010 09:33:07 ubiquitous1980 wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:
> >> I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
> >> have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
> >> editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
> >> ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
> >> operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.
> >
> > This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file
> > system does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel
> > has to fudge it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the
> > simple reason that they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they
> > are owned by root with MODE 755 or some such.
> >
> > If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some
> > likely named option.
>
> What config file would this be? Can I find it in the handbook?

Hmmm, hal config files. Those things are deliberately obfuscated, I have no
idea. You will have to search through /etc/

> > If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the
> > uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask options to mount in column 4. Full details in
> > the man page, under section "fat"
>
> I need to interact with university computers from time to time, any
> other file system with proper permissions, to be used under both linux
> and windows (without additional drivers)?

All windows file systems have this problem when accessed from Unix.

The permission models do not map to each other, so there is no translation you
can do. The only effective route is to ignore the filesystem's
owner/permission model and use some global value in it's place.


--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

On 08/03/10 16:46, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:
>> I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
>> have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
>> editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
>> ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
>> operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.
>
> This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file system
> does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel has to fudge
> it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the simple reason that
> they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they are owned by root with
> MODE 755 or some such.
>
> If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some likely
> named option.
>
> If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask
> options to mount in column 4. Full details in the man page, under section
> "fat"
>

I use both a USB memory stick with VFAT, and a USB hard drive with
NTFS. Both work fine, but I *am* mounting both as my user account using
/etc/fstab. Entries are as follows:

LABEL="USBSTICK" /media/usbstick auto user,noauto 0 0
LABEL="USBstorage" /media/usbstorage ntfs-3g user,noauto 0 0

Then I just type "mount /media/usbstick" and use it as normal.

John Moe

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> ubiquitous1980 wrote:
>>
>> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
>>>> have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
>>>> editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
>>>> ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
>>>> operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file
>>> system
>>> does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel has to
>>> fudge
>>> it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the simple reason
>>> that
>>> they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they are owned by root
>>> with
>>> MODE 755 or some such.
>>>
>>> If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some
>>> likely
>>> named option.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> What config file would this be? Can I find it in the handbook?
>>
>>>
>>> If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the
>>> uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask
>>> options to mount in column 4. Full details in the man page, under section
>>> "fat"
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I need to interact with university computers from time to time, any
>> other file system with proper permissions, to be used under both linux
>> and windows (without additional drivers)?
>>
>>
>>
>
> I don't use these so I am by no means saying they work well.
>
> sys-fs/ntfs3g
>
> sys-fs/ntfsprogs
>
> I have read that the first one works pretty well but no first hand knowledge
> if it is true or not. You may want to read this as well.
>
> http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php
>
> You may just want to test this with something not so important for a bit and
> see how well this works for you.

You could also use ext2 and install the driver on Windows:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

Paul Hartman wrote:

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Dale<rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:


ubiquitous1980 wrote:


Alan McKinnon wrote:



On Monday 08 March 2010 08:31:40 ubiquitous1980 wrote:




I have a usb flash drive which will not allow me to edit its files. I
have tried chmod a+rwx -R $files but this does still not permit
editing. Further, the files within the directories refuse to have
ownership changed via chown $myusername -R /mnt/disk. Output is:
operation not permitted. Any ideas? Thanks.




This happens when the flash drive is type vfat. This excuse for a file
system
does not have a concept of owners and permissions so the kernel has to
fudge
it. You are finding that you cannot change these for the simple reason
that
they do not exist and the kernel is pretending they are owned by root
with
MODE 755 or some such.

If hal is mounting the device, check your hal config, looking for some
likely
named option.




What config file would this be? Can I find it in the handbook?



If the device is mounted via /etc/fstab, adjust the
uid/gid/umask/dmask/fmask
options to mount in column 4. Full details in the man page, under section
"fat"






I need to interact with university computers from time to time, any
other file system with proper permissions, to be used under both linux
and windows (without additional drivers)?





I don't use these so I am by no means saying they work well.

sys-fs/ntfs3g

sys-fs/ntfsprogs

I have read that the first one works pretty well but no first hand knowledge
if it is true or not. You may want to read this as well.

http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php

You may just want to test this with something not so important for a bit and
see how well this works for you.


You could also use ext2 and install the driver on Windows:
http://www.fs-driver.org/




The computers belong to a university so he may not be able to install
any drivers.


Dale

:-) :-)