I have have access to my cdrom drive for burning etc. but when I copy files as a regular user onto my hard drive I don't have write permissions.

This is seems like a chmod situation but I can't find any info on it except making the regular user part of the cdrom group which it already is....so how do I change my cdrom drive's permissions so a regular user can have write privileges to files that user has copied onto the hard drive from the cdrom drive? Thanks

please post your /etc/fstab

also amending ur udev rules can create devices (e.g cdroms), with different permissions.

I don't know how debian is set up, since I have never tried it. But do you have a gui for the administrator to edit users and assign users to group permissions? You might want to make sure that you are in enough groups. If you are the main (or only) user of your machine, then you might want to add your user name to every group listed. If that doesn't help, then maybe someone who is less of a newbie than I can help you!

Your question seems a little confused. In order to copy files to a hard drive folder, the user needs write permission to the target folder; on the hard drive. The user only needs read permission to the cdrom drive.

So the question is, just what folder can the user not write files to. The user should have write permission to folders in the users home directory; ie /home/usersname unless they have been changed.

If the user does not have write permissions, you can use chmod to change the folder permissions.

The other question I have is, who is the owner of the folder the user can not write to? BTW, if you are new to this, may I suggest you use konqueror to view and change your folder permissions. If you right click on the folder in question, you will see a drop down. You should see a 'properties' option. Click on it, a tabbed window will open. You can display the owner, and change permissions by clicking. Keep in mind, if you are not the owner, you may not be able to change all permissions. You can start konqueror as root and change permissions, just be careful. To start konqueror as root, ( if you are using KDE ) click Start --> Run command --> type ' kdesu konqueror ' ( without the quotes ) press enter. You will have to supply the root password, and konqueror will open with root privlages.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your responses. I cannot post my fstab because I am away from my Linux machine at this time. I think I need to clarify the problem I’m having.

Using Gnome and logged in as a regular user I insert a cd into the computer's cdrom drive. Next, a little cdrom icon pops up on my desktop. I open it up and it displays the files/folders located on the cd. I create a new folder on the desktop and name it mp3_files.

I then drag the entire contents of the cdrom into the desktop folder named mp3_files. The files and folders from the cdrom are all there but next to each one is a little icon of a lock. When I right click on one of the files and choose permissions it indicates that I have read and execute permissions but not write permissions. This causes problems, for example, if I try to delete these files it won’t let me because I don’t have write permissions. I can use chmod to change permissions on these files but I don’t want to worry about chmoding every time I copy files from my cdrom drive.

I’ve tried a few things to remedy this problem such as:

chmod u+w /dev/cdrom

chmod u+w /mnt/cdrom .....but with no luck.

I think what I need to do is change the permissions on my cdrom device so that files have write permission when copied by a regular user to that users home folder or desktop. Any suggestions? Thanks

Here's my fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdb6 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hdb5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda /media/usb0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sdb /media/usb1 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
~


Here's an ls -la of dev/cdrom

shaggy:/dev# ls -la cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2005-11-15 22:39 cdrom -> hda

Files pulled from a cdrom are, by definition read-only, since a cdrom is read-only media (ROM=Read-Only Memory).
There may be some sort of setting in whichever burning program you use to "preserve permissions" or something similiar, possibly to "preserve ownership" as well.

HTH

Have a look at the permissions and ownership of the folder on the desktop you drop the mp3's in, and the ownership and permissions of the mp3's. I just stuck a data CD in my drive, copied files. They were owned by me, and the permissions were read only. I could delete the files without doing anything special. I'm using KDE, not Gnome.