Partition Issues

[MetalheadGautham]

In Debian, all my partitions are assigned to the Root, and Root is their owner. I want to claim ownership for them for myself. How do I do that ?

I have a FAT32 Partition where I store all my Videos, DVD Rips, Audio, CD Rips, Images, eBooks, etc named Multimedia(duh).

Eventhough I am reinstalling Window$, I don't intend to use it for ANYTHING ecept some gaming, so I don't want windows to mess with that partition.

I want to losslessly(without losing files) convert it to a linux native format. How do I do that ?

And what format would you recommend ? EXT2, EXT3 or ReiserFS or something else ?

Remember that no programs will be run from that partition - it will be home for static data and data would just keep on adding to it, and occasionally I will be burning stuff off as compilations to save disc space. So which format is the best ?

I intend to mount it within my /home partition, which is EXT3.

Also, is there any defragmenting software for linux so that I can rearrange files in an EXT3 partition to enable easy resizing of partition and faster data recovary times in case of failure ?

Can a Distro like NimbleX be successfully installed in a YAFFS2 partition on a thumb drive and expected to offer classy performance ?

Can I encrypt a YAFFS2 Partition with a password to enable file access protection ?

Is it possible to create a pendrive companion to a standard DVD distro, where changes from the normal file settings in the DVD distro are kept ?

Lastly, I am thinking of going out today to dig the market for some of the older variety 256mb PenDrives for a project involving a bootable distro on it designed for basic use. Will it be enough ? I don't intend to make a swap, and I need to run it on a machine with 256MB DDR ram and 488MB SWAP.

[Segfault]

In Debian, all my partitions are assigned to the Root, and Root is their owner. I want to claim ownership for them for myself. How do I do that ?

See man fstab and man mount perhaps? This is where permissions are determined.

I have a FAT32 Partition where I store all my Videos, DVD Rips, Audio, CD Rips, Images, eBooks, etc named Multimedia(duh).
Eventhough I am reinstalling Window$, I don't intend to use it for ANYTHING ecept some gaming, so I don't want windows to mess with that partition.
I want to losslessly(without losing files) convert it to a linux native format. How do I do that ?

You can't. Make a fresh backup, convert to Ext3, restore from backup.

And what format would you recommend ? EXT2, EXT3 or ReiserFS or something else ?
Remember that no programs will be run from that partition - it will be home for static data and data would just keep on adding to it, and occasionally I will be burning stuff off as compilations to save disc space. So which format is the best ?

Ext3 is just fine. Mount with noexec option if you have security concerns.

I intend to mount it within my /home partition, which is EXT3.

Totally irrelevant, you mount it where you want to, ~/foo is fine.

Also, is there any defragmenting software for linux so that I can rearrange files in an EXT3 partition to enable easy resizing of partition and faster data recovary times in case of failure ?

Make sure you retain the 5% superuser-reserved when running makefs. As long as there is some free space on that filesystem fragmentation is not going to be a concern. Ext3 is a journaling FS, the very reason of journal is to speed up recovery.

Can a Distro like NimbleX be successfully installed in a YAFFS2 partition on a thumb drive and expected to offer classy performance ?
Can I encrypt a YAFFS2 Partition with a password to enable file access protection ?
Is it possible to create a pendrive companion to a standard DVD distro, where changes from the normal file settings in the DVD distro are kept ?

Don't know what is NimleX, or YAFFS2.

Tip: Do not ask too many questions at once, nobody knows everything and this holds potential helpers back.

[devils casper]

In Debian, all my partitions are assigned to the Root, and Root is their owner. I want to claim ownership for them for myself. How do I do that ?

Thats not a good idea at all. Regular User can gain root privileges through su or sudo easily.

For everything else, Segfault has posted very good suggestions.

[Segfault]

Hey, MetalheadGautham, you meant your data partitions, right? Definitely a user cannot own system partition(s), this would trash all *nix security!

[MetalheadGautham]

See man fstab and man mount perhaps? This is where permissions are determined.

You can't. Make a fresh backup, convert to Ext3, restore from backup.
Ext3 is just fine. Mount with noexec option if you have security concerns.

Any distinct advantages of using ReiserFS, JFS, or some other unknown-to-me type of file systems ?

And why isn't conversion possible ? I heard such a thing is possible when converting FAT32 to NTFS. So why not this ? Can't files be rearranged and moved one by one while formating from one end or something ?

Make sure you retain the 5% superuser-reserved when running makefs. As long as there is some free space on that filesystem fragmentation is not going to be a concern. Ext3 is a journaling FS, the very reason of journal is to speed up recovery.

whats 5% superuser-reserved ?
And my partitions often end up with no free space.
I run on a 80GB HDD with sometimes tiny partitions.

Don't know what is NimleX, or YAFFS2.

Well, NimbleX is one of the best USB Flash Drive based Distros.
YAFFS2 is Yet Another Flash File System 2, which is supposed to be the world's best filesystem for flash memory, and ensures that the memory has a nice looooooong life.

Tip: Do not ask too many questions at once, nobody knows everything and this holds potential helpers back.

Sorry. But I always get questions in bulk. If I made seperate threads, this forum would look like a mess wouldn't it ?

Thats not a good idea at all. Regular User can gain root privileges through su or sudo easily.

For everything else, Segfault has posted very good suggestions.

Yes I know, but there are reasons. A particular partition has all the user doccuments. It has a folder for every user in the Computer and its NTFS. Something like a /home partition on windows. I need to grant each user his/her privilages for that partition

Hey, MetalheadGautham, you meant your data partitions, right? Definitely a user cannot own system partition(s), this would trash all *nix security!

I have no intention of assigning system level partitions (ones which contain an OS or some important data) to a user. I only want to own some folders which contain personal data.

[devils casper]

Its easy to assign read/write access to data partitions for all users. First of all, install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access.
Set umask value to zero for NTFS partition in /etc/fstab file.

/dev/ntfs_partition  /mount_point ntfs-3g  defaults,umask=0  0  0

All users will have read/write access.

[MetalheadGautham]

Its easy to assign read/write access to data partitions for all users. First of all, install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access.
Set umask value to zero for NTFS partition in /etc/fstab file.

/dev/ntfs_partition  /mount_point ntfs-3g  defaults,umask=0  0  0

All users will have read/write access.

not ALL users.
I have a primary user (Me) and a guest user(anyone else).
I want access to the entire partition, while I want to give the guest user access only to a couple of folders at the root of that partition.

[MetalheadGautham]

And one more thing: In Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I remember comming across a python program available in the repos which can handle every single partition management related activity. It was a GUI to edit several configuration files.

Can I know what its name is and where I can get it for Debian ?

[i92guboj]

Any distinct advantages of using ReiserFS, JFS, or some other unknown-to-me type of file systems ?

Ext3 is the best if you care about your data. Reiserfs has big (And I mean BIG) issues related to fragmentation. Reiser4 is not considered stable. jfs is ok, and lighter on cpu. XFS is something I highly disregard unless you have an UPS.

And why isn't conversion possible ? I heard such a thing is possible when converting FAT32 to NTFS. So why not this ? Can't files be rearranged and moved one by one while formating from one end or something ?

Because there aren't tools to do so. Note that fat32 is the simplest and worse fs ever. Ext3 or reiserfs are far more complex than fat ever was.

whats 5% superuser-reserved ?

When formating linux reserves by default 5% of the total space for root. This guarantees that your system will be able to boot even if your drive gets full.

You can change that with tune2fs, no need to reformat.

[quote]

not ALL users.
I have a primary user (Me) and a guest user(anyone else).
I want access to the entire partition, while I want to give the guest user access only to a couple of folders at the root of that partition.

You are not taking a correct path. If you forbid the acess to that partition you are not going to have a way to allow access selectively to a given dir into that device.

You should be looking into chmod, chown and umask instead, and leave alone the permissions and ownership of the device node.

And one more thing: In Ubuntu Hardy Heron, I remember comming across a python program available in the repos which can handle every single partition management related activity. It was a GUI to edit several configuration files.

Can I know what its name is and where I can get it for Debian ?

I can't be sure what hardy ships. But you can use gparted to edit partitions graphically.

[MetalheadGautham]

OK, I have decided to use EXT3 for this perpose.

I can't be sure what hardy ships. But you can use gparted to edit partitions graphically.

GParted can do NOTHING AT ALL.

I need a tool to configure mount points of each partition, edit permissions concerning each partition, describe how its mounted, apply mount time flags to it, etc. All GParted does is resizing, formating and converting. It can't do ANY administrative work.