Cannot write to NTFS USB device!

[Dapper Dan]

I have an EEE PC netbook set up to record and transfer files from a USB stick. The USB device was initially formatted with ReiserFS. Under Reiser, I was able to easily add a line to my /etc/fstab so the USB device would be mounted at boot as writable by a regular user. Easy as pie. It worked perfectly.

For reasons I won't go into, it was decided that the USB device should be formatted with NTFS so that it can be transported physically to a Windows machine where the files can be transferred directly if needed.

I know the device can be written to. If I mount the USB device "by hand" and change its permissions and ownership, I can read and write with it all day long.

I have tried a zillion different fstab configurations I've found on the net and none will allow me to do what I used to could do when the device was formatted with Reiser. I need to do this:

1. Have the device mounted during boot so a regular user can read and write to it.

That's it!

Here is my present /etc/fstab that also doesn't allow read - write access to the external USB device formatted with NTFS...

# <file system>        <dir>     <type>    <options>              <dump> <pass>

/dev/sda1              /                 reiserfs    relatime                        0      0
/dev/sr0               /cdrom            iso9660     ro,user,noauto,unhide           0      0
/dev/sr0               /dvd              udf         ro,user,noauto,unhide           0      0
/dev/sdb1              /mnt/sdb1         ntfs-3g     defaults,user,rw                1      0
devpts                 /dev/pts          devpts      defaults                        0      0
none                   /sys              sysfs       defaults                        0      0
none                   /proc             proc        defaults                        0      0
tmp                    /tmp              tmpfs       defaults                        0      0
#shm                   /dev/shm          tmpfs       defaults                        0      0
usb                    /proc/bus/usb     usbfs       defaults                        0      0

# End of file

What must I do to the "ntfs" line in my fstab so the USB stick will be mounted as readable and writable by regular user? Any help appreciated.

[Dapper Dan]

Okay, I found a way to make this work. I placed:

/sbin/mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

...in /etc/rc.local and now I get read - write for regular user.

[rokytnji]

I don't know if this applies to Crux Dan, so bear with my ignorance.

On my Icewm I run ROX File Manager and PCManFM. To be able to mount USB drives from file managers, (either one of them) and like I said, bear with me.

I uninstalled ivman and installed halevt module/deamon through terminal. To be on the safe side I edited Icewm and Fluxbox startup file and included

halevt &

though it probably wasn't needed to be done because I saw halevt load up on boot screen.

It works slicker than snot mounting drives through my file managers.

halevt, HAL events handler homepage

I realize this post doesn't have much to do with auto write privilidges(though I can transfer files just fine), but I thought I would throw it out there in case you wanted to know about it. I was also wondering why they wanted a ntfs file system when fat 32 would do just fine for a usb drive.

[saivin]

I placed:

/sbin/mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1

...in /etc/rc.local and now I get read - write for regular user.

Dan, could you please explain what it is and how it solves the problem?

[Dapper Dan]

Dan, could you please explain what it is and how it solves the problem?

Do you have ntfs-3g installed? If so, do a search and find mount.ntfs-3g. I will likely be placed under /sbin as mine is. Wherever it is, use it to mount the device from /dev to the folder it is mounted to... the same as I have.

From what I've been able to determine, the regular mount command is not able to mount ntfs partitions or devices formatted with it in read-write. If ntfs-3g is installed, you can mount the drives as read-write with that instead. That has been my experience anyway. Does that help?

[saivin]

Thanks Dan, that helps.

But I had success with just 'ntfs' entry in my /etc/fstab, long time back. If I remember correctly I even had edited boot.ini from windows so as to load linux from windows bootloader. Both (the editing and consequent booting from windows loader) had worked.

Anyway I don't have windows in my home computer/laptop anymore (I'm 100% on linux at home ). Will try in office later.