My linux user account needs root privilage to delete files from the pendrive(/mnt/auto/sda1) or to move contents to it.How should I give root privilage as far as accessing the pendrive is concerned?

If you are in the sudoers (you will be able to tell after using this if you are or not)

Otherwise, just use

to login as root.

Rather than doing so, you should be asking how to mount the device with the correct privileges so users can write on it. This depends in a number of things, starting with the type of file system and how you mount it.

Yes..........How should I do that.........

Well, the first thing is, how do you mount the drive?

The second thing is what file system did you use to mount it?

If you are not sure, post the contents of /etc/fstab, however that might not help if the system automounts the pen drive using some non-standard odd thing, like most do nowadays.

System auto mounts the pendrive at /mnt/auto/sda1.Can I edit fstab manually?

when I give this it said only root can do that.What should I do?

Sure. But the whole thing comes down at one single problem: how is your OS mounting your drive?

If it's specified in /etc/fstab, then you should be able to edit /etc/fstab and be done with it. If it's a FAT32 file system, you need to look at the umask option (you probably want umask=000). For other fs's, the thing can be different. Check the mount man page:

Other common ways to mount stuff are ivman and udev rules. But first, let's check that fstab.

Well, you can try to add umask=000 to the list of options, not sure if that works with fs type "auto". So, try this:

If not, try

Assuming that your pen drive is formatted with fat32. Fat32 volumes can't store linux permissions because they simply lack the structures to do so. So all the permissions are emulated at mount time, that's what umask does. A mask of 000 means that all the files will have permissions set to 777 (all permissions for all users).

As said, this is all related to vfat (and maybe ntfs, check the mount man page).

My fstab look like this.............

Try to modify the sda1 line like I told you above and see if that makes a different. Remember that:

• to modify fstab you need to be root, so use "sudo nano /etc/fstab"
• for the changes to take effect you need to umount and mount again the volume

For the two commands I get the following error message..........

I am not sure what are you doing. Did you already modify /etc/fstab? Either way, what exact command are you using to mount the drive?

If you want to be able to manually mount/umount stuff you might be interested in reading about the "users" mount option. In that case, your line in fstab would become:

My pendrive is automatically mounted. The above error message is found after editing fstab as said by you..........


I added the current user to the group ROOT. But that groupd didnt have the write permission on pendrive. WHat should be done on the group to give write permission on pendrive...........

In your fstab line, try changing "user" by "user". I assume you also added the umask stuff. Then try this and see if it works as a normal user:

If it works, check if you can write something to the drive, for example:

If it works, then it should continue working on the next mounts. If it doesn't work then, please, give me the output of this command:

Maybe it's not in fat32 after all.

As said, it depends on the type of file system that you have. In fat32 you set the permissions at mount time, using umask. With linux file systems you set the permissions on the fs once it's mounted, using chmod/chown like with any other directory or regular file.