I got myself a eee pc because it's cheap enough to be expendable and can connect to the net. I figured, since I was only going to be doing programming with it and not much else, I'd get the 1GB version and just run everything off a thumb drive if I needed hard drive space for anything, since the bigger HD version would probably end up being not enough hard drive space in the end anyways.

Well, I have some issues.
I downloaded this:
http://download.cloud.secondlife.com....99587.tar.bz2
the Second Life linux client, thinking it would be a fun way to pass the time, and I've hit a situation.
Having extracted the files from the usb drive to the usb drive, I am apparently not the owner of the files.
And so every time I try chmod 777 on them, I get no response, but the permissions don't change. I try chown, and the operation fails.

I check online for support, and everyone's saying to open up file manager in administrative mode, but there's a catch: I have no "launch" button, no "administrative tools" button, no "services" button, basically everything that would get me to the tool I need is not there.

So I can't change the owner of the file. When I plug the device into my (other, stronger) laptop running mandriva, it'll launch. at least, the program runs, but my laptop won't connect to the net without proprietary drivers (DOH!) and that's not really what I want either. But get this, I can't change the permissions from there either. I can't log in as root, and can't use sudo, because I'm not on the sudoers list (geez, who installed this anyways) so I get reported. (ooh, I'm scared)

gah.

So I log into my windows box, and try taking a look at the file permissions there, and when I right click the folder they're in, the "read-only" box is half-checked, so I uncheck it and tell it to apply the permissions to everything under it. it goes through a progress bar, I click ok, and just to be sure I check the properties again... /facepalm and there the box is half-checked again.

So go figure, I can't change the ownership of this usb stick, that I thought I owned.

So basically I have just exhausted all of my linux knowledge in trying to get stuff working off a USB stick but I KNOW I need to be able to get stuff working off the stick in the future, so this is just me admitting that I need help.

the stick is a kingston datatraveler, it says 16GB on the front of it but it really only has 15GB. I figure there's some sort of hidden partition on it that's causing something, but that's not showing up anywhere so I'm assuming I'm just being paranoid about that.

slightly stronger laptop is a toshiba satellite that I got because it was small and had a fingerprint scanner.

windows box is home-built, nothing special. win xp 64-bit edition.

Basically if any of you guys have any info for me that I can use to get stuff working off my usb drives I'll be very grateful.

it'd also be cool to find out if I can use my SD card to store stuff that I download from apt-get. only got about 80 MB left on the internal drive, so the 4gig ittybittycard would be nice to store stuff on that the system needs to boot. That makes my system more secure!

If the stick is formatted with a Windows filesystem, FAT or NTFS, then it's unable to handle *nix permissions and ownership flags natively (and Windows permissions have no meaning on Linux). These flags are instead simulated through mount options, and must be changed there. You also need to have the "exec" option set in order to run any executable files.

I don't know how your system handles mounting though. Permanent drives usually have their options set in /etc/fstab. But removable devices generally use hotplugging systems, which can vary a lot among distros. You'll need to research it there.

Finally, about the disk size: 1) What the computer industry calls a gigabyte is not always what advertisers call a gigabyte (techs: 1kb=1024b, advertisers: 1kb=1000b). 2) Whatever filesystem you use, there will be a certain amount set aside for overhead, and other things such as cluster size can also affect the actual usable space. So having "only" 15gb available on a 16gb drive is not at all unusual.

Hmm...
You just gave me a nifty idea. I'll be reinstalling ubuntu on my bigger laptop, and when I do I'll try formatting the USB stick to something that can handle permissions. Compatibility with a windows environment is not what I'm going for and that might solve a lot of future problems down the road.

Thanks for your help.