I am running RedHat 9 on an IBM T40. This question concerns using a USB memory stick (PNY 2.0, 128M).

I mount the stick with and proceed, as root, with the following commands:

> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/mem #ok
> cd /mnt/mem
> touch foo # file foo is created
> mv foo goo # no problem here
> chown pcass goo #fail
- chown: chaning ownership of goo: operation not permitted.

The same sequence works without fail if I am on the hard drive rather than the memory stick. [NOTE: The point here is that on the usb-stick I can (as root) create a file, change its name and delete it, but i CAN'T change it's permissions]

(Incidentally, there are some anomolies with the USB stick: If there is a floppy drive on the second USB port I can't mount the stick at all. Any ideas here?)

which filesystem has the usb-stick?
if it is a vfat-fs i think it has the owner- and group-id of the user who mounted it. (this is not changeable, except you mount it as an other user)
is there an ext2-fs on it: no idea

Well, I guess the problem with the change of permissions has to do with your filesystem used on that usb-stick.

What filesystem do you use on it?
I know that if you use ext2/3 or reiserfs or some other linux fs it will work for sure, I use it myself.

Maybe it is fat32 or some sort of... Check that out.



With your floppy drive, check your drive mappings.

If you only plug your usb-stick in, it will always be sda1.

If you already have your floppy-usb attached, it wont be sda1 because maybe the floppy uses it.


This is how you solve this:
Plug your floppy in, and tail the output from /var/log/messages

There it says that the system has detected a device on usb and mapped it to a certain device (like sdaX)

Then insert the usb-stick and watch again the output from /var/log/messages

Then it tells you where your usb-stick is mapped, and it will be most likely /dev/sda2

So mount it with /dev/sda2 or whatever it is said there and you are done.


Hope that helps