External HDD ownership issues

[viiv]

Hello everyone
New to this forum, relatively new to linux (6 months), VERY new to Debian. I recently switched from Ubuntu/Xfce to Debian/Kde and after a bit of chaos, things seem to be working ok, but I have one major problem:

I'm not able to access my external hard drive unless I'm ROOT.

I've gone into the properties of the drive as ROOT and changed the access permissions of the main drive folders, but when I try to have those permissions apply to all the sub-folders and their contents, the dialogue box that is trying to perform the operation tells me it is "Stalled" and then I get an error message:

ERROR - KONQUEROR
/media/Z_DRIVE/AUDIO/MP3/311/Transistor (Parental Advisory)/Folder.jpg

This is one of a variety of error messages I get. The message doesn't explain much.

I've searched the other forums quite a lot and I've seen that others have had this problem. Lots of references to CHMOD and FSTAB, but honestly, it goes over my head. I did perform a recursive CHMOD operation and I got other error messages.

Any ideas?

ps. Sorry for being verbose.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

In which FileSystem External HD's partitions are formatted? Post the output of fdisk -l command here.

su -
/sbin/fdisk -l

[viiv]

Hey
Thanks for the quick reply!

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 16 128488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 17 78 498015 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3 79 1294 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 1295 4864 28676025 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 1295 4864 28675993+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 14593 117218241 7 HPFS/NTFS

The 120 GB disk is my external that I'm trying to access

[devils casper]

Execute this

su -
mkdir /media/sda1
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o defaults,umask=0
ls /media/sda1

All users will have read access in /media/sda1. Debian doesn't support NTFS write access out of box. Install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access.

su -
apt-get update
apt-get install ntfs-3g

Replace ntfs with ntfs-3g in mount command. All users will have write access too.

[viiv]

Devils Casper:
First, I think you answered another of my questions, that being the command for updating all my apps. Though, I did run into a slight snag when I ran the update. I don't know if it's a big deal

Fetched 292kB in 17s (17.1kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
W: Duplicate sources.list entry cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15] etch/contrib Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/Debian%20GNU_Linux%204.0%20r3%20%5fEtch%5f%20-%20Official%20i386%20NETINST%20Binary-1%2020080218-14:15_dists_etch_contrib_binary-i386_Packages)
W: Duplicate sources.list entry cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15] etch/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/Debian%20GNU_Linux%204.0%20r3%20%5fEtch%5f%20-%20Official%20i386%20NETINST%20Binary-1%2020080218-14:15_dists_etch_main_binary-i386_Packages)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

I ran update again to see if the problem would be fixed but I got the same message.

Then I ran the operations you gave me. Unfortunately I neglected to replace ntfs with ntfs-3g in the mount command and of course, since it was already mounted, I couldn't mount it again. I couldn't figure out how to unmount it so I unplugged the drive, remounted it and got a PERMISSION DENIED message when I tried to enter the drive. Then I ran the mount command with ntfs-3g in place of ntfs and I got this message:

WARNING: Deficient Linux kernel detected. Some driver features are
not available (swap file on NTFS, boot from NTFS by LILO), and
unmount is not safe unless it's made sure the ntfs-3g process
naturally terminates after calling 'umount'. If you wish this
message to disappear then you should upgrade to at least kernel
version 2.6.20, or request help from your distribution to fix
the kernel problem. The below web page has more information:
NTFS-3G Read/Write Driver Support

so I went to that webpage listed at the bottom of the error and I found this info:

Why do I get "WARNING: Deficient Linux kernel detected"?
The message means that you have an old and unsafe Linux kernel which is prone to data loss.

Solution: Please ask your distribution developers to fix the Linux kernel problem. The Linux kernel must be upgraded either to at least version 2.6.20, or the FUSE kernel driver must be upgraded to a safe version which is also included in the FUSE package for Linux kernel version 2.6.9 and later.

Status: Not ntfs-3g problem.

This is interesting since I just recently installed what I thought was a stable version of debian

(bear with me if I fail to make sense, still recovering from 15 years of windoze ignorance)

[devils casper]

Execute this

su -
umount /dev/sda1
mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o defaults,umask=0
ls /media/sda1

Post the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list file here.

[viiv]

Devil's Casper:
I really appreciate your continued help on this issue.

Here's what happened:

The unmount command worked.

Then, when I executed: mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o defaults,umask=0

I got the same error message:

WARNING: Deficient Linux kernel detected. Some driver features are
not available (swap file on NTFS, boot from NTFS by LILO), and
unmount is not safe unless it's made sure the ntfs-3g process
naturally terminates after calling 'umount'. If you wish this
message to disappear then you should upgrade to at least kernel
version 2.6.20, or request help from your distribution to fix
the kernel problem. The below web page has more information:
NTFS-3G Read/Write Driver Support

Here is the result of: ls /media/sda]

viiv:/home/viiv# ls /media/sda1
AUDIO  RECYCLER  System Volume Information  VIDEO  xBACKUP

Here is the contents of my sources.list file

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15]/ etch contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15]/ etch contrib main

deb ftp.osuosl.org :: Oregon State University Open Source Lab etch main non-free contrib
deb ftp.osuosl.org :: Oregon State University Open Source Lab testing main contrib non-free
deb ftp.osuosl.org :: Oregon State University Open Source Lab unstable main contrib non-free
deb ftp.osuosl.org :: Oregon State University Open Source Lab experimental main contrib non-free
deb Debian -- Security Information etch/updates main contrib
deb-src Debian -- Security Information etch/updates main contrib

(UPDATE)
Ok. I AM able to access the drive, despite that error message, but I still have issues:

1. I cannot unmount it using the gui dropdown provided when I right click on the desktop icon.
2. When I do unmount (by unplugging the drive... bad idea I know, but I had to) and then remount, the settings that we established have been forgotten and it looks like I'll have to go through the process again... I think i know how to have it run a script when it mounts, but I feel like I'll run into a permission issue since a "su" command requires a password. Ultimately I don't want to have to enter a password every time I mount the drive.
3. It looks like the problem persists. The mount commands seem to be failing now

Sorry for the extremely long post.

[viiv]

what if I just copied all my data onto the server at work and then reformatted the drive to FAT32? Would that possibly solve the problem?