I am su root and I cannot change ownership??

[Dapper Dan]

This makes me crazy! Maybe someone can fill me in. I transferred a file from my home directory to a Western Digital external hard drive. When I do, the ownership of the file is automatically changed to root. The "group is also changed to root. I want to change this file's ownership so I can use it as a regular user. So as root I go:

 chown -R dapperdan:users file_in_question

But I'm not allowed to change this file's ownership even though I'm root! If root can't change the ownership of a file, then who can???

Any help appreciated.

Dapper

[dylunio]

I doubt this will help, but have you tried su with the hyphen to substitute the user?

su -
[rootpw]
chown -R dapperdan:users file_in_question

[Dapper Dan]

Thanks dylunio for responding, but I'm afraid that doesn't work either. This is nuts! If root can't change ownership of a file, then what must be done to change it??

[oz]

If you haven't done so already, you might try adding "user" or "users" to the fstab entry for the external drive so that it can be mounted as user.

[borromini]

With Ozar. Maybe the real problem is you don't have write access to the drive or partition.

[scm]

How is the external drive mounted, and what filesystem type is it?

[Dapper Dan]

/dev/hda6        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/hda14       /                reiserfs    defaults         1   1
/dev/hda15       /home            reiserfs    defaults         1   2
/dev/hda1        /media/xp        ntfs        ro               1   0
/dev/sda5        /media/wd_fat_1  vfat        defaults         1   0
/dev/sda6        /media/wd_fat_2  vfat        defaults         1   0
/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom       auto        noauto,owner,ro  0   0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy      auto        noauto,owner     0   0
devpts           /dev/pts         devpts      gid=5,mode=620   0   0
proc             /proc            proc        defaults         0   0
none             /sys             sysfs       defaults         0   0

The external partition in question is /media/wd_fat_1. It seems to me that if root can move files in and out of this partition (as I've been doing), root should also be able to change permissions and owners of files. I can do neither.

[anomie]

Not sure why you can not change ownership, and I don't have a vfat partition to test theories on. But what you can do is use the mount options to change ownership.

Try changing

/dev/sda5        /media/wd_fat_1  vfat        defaults         1   0

to

/dev/sda5        /media/wd_fat_1  vfat        uid=uid_here,gid=gid_here         1   0

Specify the UID and GID according to which you want to have ownership. If you do not know the UID/GID, then a quick way to find this out is by using

id user_name_here

[Dapper Dan]

Hi anomie,

I changed /etc/fstab like you said and tried it again...

dapper@dan:~$ cd /media/wd_fat_1/
dapper@dan:/media/wd_fat_1$ su
Password:
root@dan:/media/wd_fat_1# ls
SteamInstall.exe 
Eudora_6.2.exe
Final Draft 7 
ZETA_1.1_LiveCD  
My Documents    
broodwar  
starcraft   
tresdemo.exe
finaldraft7.exe 
trespass
SB24_WEB64_LB_1_04_0055.exe 
Screenplays       
lowellgrippo
root@dan:/media/wd_fat_1# chown dapper:users lowellgrippo/
chown: changing ownership of `lowellgrippo/': Operation not permitted
root@dan:/media/wd_fat_1#

I also added "users" to the fstab like Ozar and borromini mentiond, still nothing!

All I want to do is change the ownership of the file - lowellgrippo. I did it this way minus the -R option, otherwise it would show "operation not permitted" on everything inside the file too which is quite a lot. I appreciate you all trying to help.

This is driving me nuts! :bang_head_against_wall:

[bryansmith]

Try changing this:

/dev/sda5        /media/wd_fat_1  vfat        defaults         1   0

to

/dev/sda5        /media/wd_fat_1  vfat        iocharset=utf8,umask=000         0   0

It's from the Ubuntu Guide and has seemed to work well for me (this will allow all users though).

Bryan