Accessing mount points for all users...

[Robert Werch]

Here's the deal:

I'm running winblows xp and fc3 (sel targeted / permissive) on the same
laptop.  I've formatted two of my xp partitions as vfat filesystems
(Documents, Music).  I'd like a user group in FC3 to be able to read,
write, and execute on these partitions.  The user group that I would
like to have access is called 'xp_access' and contains 2 users.  I
created two mount points /windows/Documents and /windows/Music.  Then I
modified /etc/fstab to automatically mount the partitions there,
respectivly.  My problem is this...  if I create the mount point as
root, it is owned by root, and therefore only accessable by root.  I try
to change the assigned group to xp_access (with or without root being a
member of the group), and I get an error message saying 'Operation Not
Permitted'  (I've tried it as root, sudo user, su user, graphically from
gnome and kde, and from a terminal in gnome and in kde....  to no
avail.)  If I create the mount points as a user, they are owned by the
user...  I have full access to the partitions as that user, but not as
the other user.  I try to change group permissions and assignments of
the mount points (as root or as the user that created the mount points)
and I get the same error message...  How can I not have permission to do
so???  I thought root could do anytihing..  and I thought the owner of
something could do anything with it....  I'm assuming user error (my
error) and a simple fix...  Otherwise, I'm frustrated!!!

In fstab I've tried different things in colume 4 (defaults, uid=500,
gid=503 (xp_access),w)...  all to varying degrees of success.  Like I
said, as root I can read, write, and execute in these partitions, but
the whole idea of linux is to not operate as root.  I can get one user
to have full access automatically, but not other users when they log
in...  Here is what my fstab file looks like right now:

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 /windows/Documents vfat uid=500 0 0
/dev/sda7 /windows/Music vfat uid=500 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrecorder auto
pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed
0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrecorder1 auto
pamconsole,fscontext=system_u:object_r:removable_t,ro,exec,noauto,managed
0 0


User 500 can do with the files what they want, and so can root...  But,
user 501 can't...  I've tried many things, and can't figure out what I'm
doing wrong....  suggesstions???

thanks for the help.  newbie.