How do I change the permissions of a hard disk?

[Martin A]

Hi!

I have a 200Gb seagate drive set as a slave in my PC (running Ubuntu 5.10, BTW), and I can only write to that disk if I'm logged in as root. If I try to change the permissions as root, nothing happens. I just put up with it for quite a while but it's getting irritating now....
can anyone help?

TiA

Martin

[AlexK]

what file-system is that disk formatted as?

[iwanabeguru]

You must put one more option in the /etc/fstab file to the device line.
for example:
one line in the fstab
{device} {mount point} {fs type} {options} {dump} {pass}

write a new extra option to the options section like:
opt1,opt2,..,optn,umask=0xxx where xxx the inverse permission bitmask

[Martin A]

Sorry, I should have provided more info: The disk is formatted as FAT32, and the mount point is set as /mnt/Storage. my /etc/fstab currently looks like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/hda2       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hda5       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hdc        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/hdd        /media/cdrom1   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto  0       0
/dev/hdb1   /mnt/Storage  vfat    defaults     0 0

DO I need to add something to that last line?

Thanks again,

Martin

[iwanabeguru]

I see u use the whole disk in one partition, i think it isn't a good idea.
but here the fstab line

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/Storage vfat defaults,gid=disk,umask=0xxx 0 0

octal bitmask for umask for example:
everyone read only : 0222
everzone read write : 0000
use man umask
and put the users to the disk group

have fun!

[Martin A]

Yeah that works good now. Thank you so much!!

BTW

I see u use the whole disk in one partition, i think it isn't a good idea.

I know its not Ideal, but I have another drive in there (one thats not listed in //etc/fstab), thats holds an exact copy of my linux/windows partions, should anything go wrong. I'm still relatively new to this, so I'll probably re-partition when I get a better feel for linux.

Thanks again!!

Martin