Hi,
I have been trying to enable read-write access to non-root users(me, when iam not using root)on FAT partitions on my BOSS Linux machine without much success so far. Heres what my fstab file looks like:
-------------------------------------------------------
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd8 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdd4 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hdb6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdd7 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults,devmode=0666 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/disk[hdb1] ntfs noauto,users,exec,rw,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdb2 /mnt/disk[hdb2] auto noauto,users,exec 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdb4 /mnt/disk[hdb4] vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/disk[hdb5] vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdd1 /mnt/disk[hdd1] vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdd3 /mnt/disk[hdd3] vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdd5 /mnt/disk[hdd5] vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0
# Added by BOSS
/dev/hdd6 /mnt/disk[hdd6] ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
-------------------------------------------------------

The ntfs partition doesn't allow rw but thts ok with me, its the FAT partitions that I am trying to setup read write access for. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Try replacing this on all your FAT partition entries:

vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=root,gid=root 0 0

with this:

vfat users,noauto,umask=0,iocharset=utf8 0 0

umask=0002 should be a little safer although the safe thing would be not to use any FAT at all.

I believe you can add all your users to a new group and use that as the argument to gid after giving it group write access (chmod g+w).

Hi,
thank you, kilgoretrout and jay73.
it didnt work, fstab is generated automatically at startup (?), so the changes i made got erased after reboot,i did try to umount and mount the FAT partitions after adding making those changes, but that didnt work either

It must be your udev rules rewriting fstab. I'm not familiar with your distro but given the entries it looks like mount points may be autogenerated at mount by udev as well. Try this for one of your FAT partitions, say hdb4. Make a permanent mount point for hdb4 at /mnt/win_d:

$ su
<enter root password>
# mkdir /mnt/win_d

then replace the hdb4 fstab entry with:

/dev/hdb4 /mnt/win_d vfat users,noauto,umask=0,iocharset=utf8 0 0

Then mount hdb4 from a console as an ordinary user:

$ mount /dev/hdb4

Check and see if you can write to hdb4 by going to /mnt/win_d and creating a file. If it works, try rebooting and see if the hdb4 fstab entry survives.

thanks kilgoretrout,

It worked, but now at start up i see a message which goes like "utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FATfilesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!" is there a way to avoid this???

BOSS Linux is a Debian based distribution(Kernel 2.6.21).

That can be eliminated by dropping "iocharset=utf8" from your fstab entry which would leave it like so:

/dev/hdb4 /mnt/win_d vfat users,noauto,umask=0 0 0

That should be more consistent with the BOSS setup as it apparrently doesn't like UTF.

hi,

this is what the FAT partitions i have rw access to have their entries as in fstab

/dev/hdd1 /mnt/disk[hdd1] vfat umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdd3 /mnt/disk[hdd3] vfat umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdd5 /mnt/disk[hdd5] vfat umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdb4 /mnt/disk[hdb4] vfat umask=000 0 0

The error messages arent't popping up anymore. So far so good. Hope this doesnt increase the risk(if any) of messing up my FAT partitions!

Thanks for helping out.