FC2 granting rw on FAT32 dir

[James Wilkinson]

Duncan Lithgow wrote:
> I simply can't work out how to get read/write permission to all member
> of the 'common' group. What I want is:
> hda1 ro to group=common (WinXP)
> hda6 rw to group=common (SharedFiles)
> 
> From what I can tell root currently has ownership and group is also 
> root, no-one else can write.
> 
> In FC2 when i go into /mnt/SharedFiles > Properties > Permissions and
> try to change anything i get the message
> 
> "The group could not be changed
> - You do not have the permissions necessary to change the group of
> 'SharedFiles' ".
> 
> Seems absurd - as I'm logged in as root, and own the partition/directory.
> 
> In XP(SP2) if i look at 'E:\ > Properties > Sharing' both the 'Share
> this folder on a network' (i have a local network) and 'Allow network
> users to change my files' are ticked.

OK: first misapprehension. "Share this folder on a network" means "Use
Windows XP's networking stack to make this available to other computers
on the network. When you're running Fedora, you're not running XP (on
that machine), so it's not relevant.

Secondly, your SharedFiles partition is formatted as FAT32. This is
good: Linux can write to it. But there is inherently no concept of file
ownership on FAT32: Windows pretends there is, sometimes, but there's
nothing for root or anyone to change on the disk.

Your WinXP partition is NTFS. There's very limited support for writing
it, and it doesn't come with Fedora. You either have to compile your own
kernel, or install appropriate RPMS: see
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora3.html

NTFS *does* have concepts of users and ownership, but it doesn't map
easily to Linux users. So far, the developers haven't tried.

So how do you change user rights on mounted filesystems?

My fstab file included these lines:
/dev/hda11 /mnt/data   vfat defaults,gid=501,dmask=2,fmask=113 0 0
/dev/hda5  /mnt/winnt  ntfs noauto,gid=501,dmask=2,fmask=113 0 0

501 is the group with write access to the drives: in your case, do
grep common /etc/group
and take the number in the third field.

Hope this helps,

James.
-- 
E-mail address: james | My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | To children ardent for some desperate glory,
                      | The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
                      | Pro patria mori.    -- Wilfred Owen