Okay, again, I'm using slackware.

My problem is that I have to manually mount /dev/hda7, even though it's listed in fstab, and when I do mount it to /home, root (who is the owner) only has r-x permission so I can't create user home directories. Root has rwx permissions to /home without the mount, but when I mount the partition I can't write to /home. So how to I set the permissions to the actual filesystem? That is what I need to do isn't it? Here's my partition table, /etc/fstab & /etc/mtab:

cfdisk (util-linux-ng 2.14.2)

Disk Drive: /dev/hda
Size: 80000000000 bytes, 80.0 GB
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 9726

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size(MB)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda2 Boot Primary NTFS [^A] 12000.69
hda5 Logical Linux ext3 9006.69
hda6 Logical Linux swap 1003.49
hda7 Logical Linux 47945.16
hda8 Logical NTFS [^A] 10001.95
Pri/Log Free Space 8.23

bash-3.1# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/hda5 / ext4 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda2 /mnt/windowspartition ntfs-3g umask=077 1 1
/dev/hda7 /home ext4 defaults 1 1
/dev/hda8 /mnt/sharedpartition ntfs-3g umask=077 1 1
#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
bash-3.1# cat /etc/mtab
/dev/root / ext4 rw,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home ntfs rw 0 0
bash-3.1#

It seems cfsdisk doesn't detect fs for hda7, and mount treats it as ntfs (->mtab)
Try to reformat this partition?
Maybe a silly suggestion...

Have a look in dmesg for mount failure messages.
What does "file -s /dev/hda7" (run as root) show ?.

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bash-3.1# file -s /dev/hda7
/dev/hda7: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x52, OEM-ID "NTFS ", sectors/cluster 8, reserved sectors 0, Media descriptor 0xf8, heads 255, hidden sectors 63, dos < 4.0 BootSector (0x80)
bash-3.1#

Maybe reassigned an old partition without doing a mkfs ?.

1 members found this post helpful.

Not apropro of anything, but what happened to hda1 ? Surely the first primary partition should be hda1, and the extended partitions will run from hda5.

I inadvertently cropped hda1 when copying. It's just the "Dell utility" partition--33MB.

Syg00, you hit the nail right on the head--I just needed to run mkfs. Thank you.