[SOLVED] Set folder permissions on a removable hard drive

[Åkeson Chihiro]

Hello,

I moved my localhost directories to a removable hard drive with a symlink

ln -s /var/www/user/work /media/LaCie/work

It works but I didn't succeed to change the permission / owner properties.
I tried to modify /etc/fstab but it does not seem to work.

I would like to be able to change permissions / owners on /media/LaCie. Default everything is user:root 700 at the moment.

Any idea please ? I googled and searched linux forums, but i need help about this topic. I miss some knowledges

My computer is a laptop running ubuntu 8 with xfce4

Thank you for any feedbacks

[D-cat]

What's the file system on the removable drive? Only on linux native systems can you set the permissions by directory. Otherwise, the whole drive mounts to one permission (as you set in the fstab).

To see, while the drive is plugged in, in a terminal, type sudo fdisk -l (lowercase L as in List), it'll show the partitions and types.

[Åkeson Chihiro]

The type is vfat. It's not possible to set permissions by directory on a removable hard drive ? Arg.... I should set my removable hard drive as a slave hard drive ?

[D-cat]

No, it is possible to set permissons on external drives IF they are linux filesystem type. vfat (fat32) is a DOS/Windows file system which doesn't support user permissions period. Even if you took the drive out and placed inside your computer as a slave it still wouldn't work the way you want.

What you'd need to do is modify the partition tabe on your external drive and reformat it as a linux file system (I suggest ext2), then you should be able to set file and directory permissions any way you want. Note, the drive would become unreadable to Windows computers.

[Åkeson Chihiro]

Thank you very much D-cat, you rock. I learnt new things today

So my new question is : does someone know if I can safely format USB or external hard drive from the brand LaCie or Buffalo in ext2 ?

[Åkeson Chihiro]

I used gparted to format the drive in ext3 format. It works.

Thanks for the informations