Thank you for those URLs and the -p option.
Here's what happened when I tried chown again:
(I've condensed it to show only the dir I'm trying to change and replaced my username with "*****")
Code:
# dir -l /media
drwxrwxrwx 2 ***** root 4096 2008-03-03 15:59 TOSHIBA
# mount /dev/sda1 /media/TOSHIBA
# dir -l /media
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 16384 1969-12-31 18:00 TOSHIBA
# chown ***** /media/TOSHIBA
chown: changing ownership of `/media/TOSHIBA': Operation not permitted
# chown -fv ***** /media/TOSHIBA
failed to change ownership of `/media/TOSHIBA' to *****
With chmod, it says it works, but it stays the same.
Code:
# dir -l /media
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 16384 1969-12-31 18:00 TOSHIBA
# chmod -fv 777 /media/TOSHIBA
mode of `/media/TOSHIBA' changed to 0777 (rwxrwxrwx)
# dir -l /media
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 16384 1969-12-31 18:00 TOSHIBA
My only (far out) idea is that, becuase I did a partial install of Debian to format the disk how I wanted, the "root" user is not THE root user, but A root user, the root user of the previous install. I don't know if that's possible, but I don't know why else it would deny access to the root user. (In the partial install, I didn't get far enough to enter root password though.)
I've also tried using sudo for chmod/chown, but the same thing happens. When I try to use the Nautilus GUI when logged in as root, after I check the box it un-checks it 1/2 second later.
Should I just try erasing this drive and using the -p option you mentioned to re-copy my old drive onto this one? Or is there a change I can make to the fstab/mtab to fix this? I'll try to do some more research on my own too.