norm user mount problem
 

I spend more and more time as superuser because of problems like these:

I want to mount a partition (ntfs, so happens) while I'm a normal user.

It tells me only root can issue such a command.

Well, mounting and umounting is a very mundane task, which it should be in the power of a normal user to do. I don't know how to change this policy.

I found it easier to add my normal user to sudoers, and I was able to sudo mount as normal user. Great, it's even more frustrating, because you appear to mount properly, but then it doesn't let you read the partition.

I'm definite there's a easy way around this. Is the some sort of "mount config" file where I can allow normal users to mount?

man fstab or man mount

Edit the line in fstab that refers to your ntfs partition, so that it contains the user option. You
must be root to edit fstab. Once mounted, you can check the permissions of the mount
point. Permissions can be changed with the chmod command or chgrp commands. man each
of them to learn more.

class_struggle,

Here is the line in my /etc/fstab file:
This mounts my WinXP drive under /mnt/win_c, readable by all normal users.

HTH
Baldrick

in order to get your users to be able to mount and umount partitions, add the option of "user" to your /etc/fstab files to let them mount and umount

Thanks all for your answers. However, I still haven't been having any luck.

I noticed I had "users" (i.e. plural) in my fstab options, but actually dropping the "s" didn't come good. I used Baldrick settings also (which significantly don't have "user") and no luck either.

Thanks anyway .. my search will continue. Quite the little rascal though: fstab and mount. :-)

try umask=000, that worked for me

from a redhat website


By default, only root may perform mounts. The user option specifies that anyone should be able to perform the predefined mount.

therefore, if u add the "user" option in the options of your fstab file, it should allow the user to mount and umount that one partition, user has to be done to all the lines in the fstab

Is it possible that someone changed the permissions on mount and umount to 744 or some such thing? Permissions need to be 755 for non-root users to be able to execute the commands. Do a which mount to find the path, cd to the directory and ls -l mount to check the permissions.

rws?
 

The umask setting doesn't seem to help me, either.

I checked the mount file itself, and I see that under permissions, the owner (root of course) has r, w and s permissions. S-permission, not x-permission. the umount command has the same thing. They seem to be the only files there in /bin with this exotic setting. Can anybody shed any light?

Meanwhile I'll continue hunting .... thx 4 replies.

I don't think you should allow the user to mount/umount the filesytem. By adding the entry into fstab means that you mount the filesystem when you bootup, then you dont need to do any mounting/umounting. I would have it like this:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs defaults,ro,umask=0000 0 0

Or is it bcs you want to allow user to open an external drive?