[SOLVED] chmod issues on a removable hard disk

[saint_geser]

Hi guys,
so the situation is this - I'm using OpenSuSE 11.1 with all the latest updates and KDE 4.2 as desktop environment.
I have a removable drive mounted on my system using ntfs-3g. I can write on it if I log in as root but trying to change permissions doesn't work whe i use something like

chmod -R a+w /media/new

I really need it to be writable for all users, do you guys know what can be the issue?

[svinoba]

I didnot try chmod after the drive (NTFS partition) is connected. But in my system I have added umask=000 to the line in /etc/fstab for the internal NTFS partition (D drive . Though 'ls -l' shows the drive as owned by 'root' I'm able to read and write as normal user.

Here is the exact line from my /etc/fstab.

/dev/sda8	/mnt/fun	ntfs-3g	umask=000	0	0

[saint_geser]

Thanks for the reply!
Look, in my fstab devices go by device id, so the line for my removable drive looks like this

/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WDC_WD32_00BEVT-00ZCT0_WDC_WD3200_WD-WXEZ07F49109-0:0-part1 /media/new           ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0

When I added umask=000 to the parameters and then ran "mount -a" nothing happens. What do these parameters mean anyway: gid, fmask, dmask?

[svinoba]

Frankly speaking i don't know. don't add umask=000 to existing line. (Btw, by 'nothing happens' you mean you still didnot get write power for normal user?)

Either:
a) Remove all the options starting users to locale and put just umask=000. This was from my slackware install. Worked like charm. So, am following it in all other distros I use.
OR
b) Mostly dmask=022 means 755 (masks are always the opposite of the actual rights). Going by it, you may also try puttig dmask to 000 in the original line(without using umask option I mean).

[saint_geser]

Woo-hoo! Thanks a lot! It works!

Moderators: The issue has been resolved!