[SOLVED] re.: SCSI external HD

[operator]

has anyone come across permission problems when trying to mount SCSI external drives?

I bought a 1TB external hard drive and configuring it on my windows partition first (dual-boot laptop) I discovered that those big external storage use SCSI technology - then I booted Slackware12.2 and wrote the /etc/fstab as follow:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/hd auto noauto,user 0 0

and I noticed that despite me being able to mount the disc as 'user' , i can only read or write in it if i'm logged in as 'root' (not even being the 'super user' by running 'su') - I have run 'chmod -R namedir/file' but still not able to write to the disc - if i take a look at eh permission for it, I get:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2002-03-16 07:34 hd (when partition is umounted)

then i mount the partition and this is what happens:

drwx------ 1 root root 4096 2009-01-22 00:25 hd (partition mounted)

I thought that it was because I was mounting the disc on a dir that belonged to 'root' (/mnt/hd), so i created my own dir on my own partition and still the same problem -

is this something peculiar of SCSI drives? I reckon that i have done that needs be done in terms of permission - any ideas?

thnks

[Freston]

Hmm, If you can't mount a device as user, usually that is because you're not member of the plugdev group. Another reason could be that you mount the device thus:
(as user) /mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd
This wont work. A peculiarity in the mount program pulls the emergency brake.

You either:

(as user) /mount /dev/sda1
--or--
(as user) /mount /mnt/hd

And the mount program looks up in fstab what to mount or where.

The permissions on the mount points are not really important. In your above example, I take it you mounted the device as root. This makes root the owner of the device.

[operator]

hi freston,
not sure I understand you... or maybe it's my fault cos i didnt make myself clear. I can mount the external hard-drive both as 'user' and as 'root', but when I mount it as user I can't write the directory (where I have mounted the device, in my case /mnt/hd ) - I know how to fiddle with the /etc/fstab file and I know that the line I have for the device is pretty much right, regardless; so i was just wondering if this happens only cos the HD is a SCSI device, and if so, is there a way around it?

[HROAdmin26]

A) No - they are not SCSI HDD's. USB connections fall under the SCSI driver in Linux. And all HDD's are listed as /dev/sdX with newer kernels (regardless if HDD is SCSI, IDE, or SATA.)

B) No - your permission issue has to do with how you are mounting it. If you want the volume to be writeable by any user, you can mount with the umask=0 option.

mount -o umask=0 /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd

[operator]

thanx a lot HROAdmin26 - believe it or not I logged in to say that I found the answer on the forum on an old thread, and it's similar to what you suggested - I have added the following to /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/hd ntfs rw,umask=0000,user,gid=users 0 0

does it look similar to your advice? or is there a shorter / more correct way to add this to /etc/fstab?

many thanks to all

[operator]

sorry! it seems that I have only solved half of the problem, and since I realized that i'm not so good at getting the permission right, i ask for help again

now, this is what the line on my /etc/fstab looks like:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/hd ntfs noauto,umask=000,user,gid=users 0 0

so now i can mount and read /mnt/hd as user, but I still can't write on it (/mnt/hd) - any ideas why?

thank you

[HROAdmin26]

*Guessing*

You have an NTFS filesystem and are using a Linux NTFS driver that does not support (or is mounting read-only) writing to NTFS.

Use the ntfs-3g module for read/write NTFS access.

[operator]

I have changed the '/etc/fstab' line from

/dev/sda1 /mnt/hd ntfs noauto,umask=000,user,gid=users 0 0

to

/dev/sda1 /mnt/hd ntfs-3g noauto,umask=000,user,gid=users 0 0

and that is because I noticed that one of my partition line on /etc/fstab (win/slack dual-boot) is mounted as ntfs-3g - however, this partition is also not accessible as 'user' and can only write to it if i'm logged in as 'root'

is that how i'm supposed to choose the ntfs-3g driver? if not, how do i choose the ntfs-3g driver? and why I CAN write to the nntfs device if i start X as root?

very confused!

[devils casper]

Add this code in /etc/fstab file :

/dev/sda1   /mnt/hd   ntfs-3g   defaults,umask=0  0  0

Execute mount -a command and all users will have read/write access in /mnt/hd.

[operator]

thank you Super Moderator; it worked! and sorry for the late reply!