hey there.

i just bought a new hard drive, and partitioned it like this to load debian

hda1 /
hda2 /swap
hda3 /stuff

i made a backup ( as root ) everything onto hda3 ( /stuff) like the .mozilla-thunderbird dirrectory and some music and stuff. i wanted to save my addressbook and such when i reinstalled everything. but now when i try to copy it over to /home/ruwach - me, it gives me all permission denied. so i copied it as root and i still dont have access to it as ruwach ( my user name)

so what can i do, and how can i modify /etc/fstab to automatically mount it when i boot and give me as user permission to do whatever i want with it..

here is what i have tried so far.

chmod 777 - no dice
chown /stuff to ruwach - not valid user


any help would ...... be a lot of help - thanks

As you reinstalled it sounds like ruwach doesn't exist. Did you copy /etc? Check /etc/passwd. If ruwach isn't there, add ruwach as a user.

Then chown /stuff to ruwach.

i checked and ruwach is there. in fact, i can log in as ruwach
i created the users the exact same way in both installs.

i dont get it.

please help

When you said you tried something, please give the exact commands. If you didn't try

chmod -R 755 /home/ruwach

chown -R ruwach:ruwach /home/ruwach

If this doesn't work, please post your /etc/fstab

well i have permission as ruwach to do anything with the /home/ruwach dirrectory. the issue i am dealing with is the inability to move some backed up files from another partition on the drive because my permission is gone.

I think your saying your trying to copy files form /stuff to your home directory? Did you try

chmod -R 755 /stuff

This should allow user ruwach to copy files from /stuff to /home/ruwach and then with them whatever you please. But not give write permission in /stuff for ruwach. For write make the 755 777.

If ruwach is a member of the group users it would be better to 770 and chgrp -R users /stuff

Bingo ! thats what worked. thanks much