to change the permission of read only file systems
 

Hello,

I have an external hard drive. All the files in it shows read only mode. I am not able to change the permission using root also. How can I change the permission of all the files of this hard drive. I am using it in Linux, fedora core 7.

Thanks
Jessy

welcome to LQ!!

What is the filesystem on the external drive? If it is something like NTFS or FAT, you cannot use the same permissions and ownership tools as you can for the Linux filesystems.

Maybe more info than you wanted, but i like to keep all shared data on EXT3. 99% of the time I'm using Linux. When I do run Windows, I access the shared data using the ext2fsd driver.

How can i check the file system ? should I change the file system to change the permission ?

One method is to simply run the "mount" command. This gives you the filesystem for any partition which is already mounted.

I'm pretty sure that you cannot change the filesystem without backing up the data, reformatiing, and then copying the data. If the data is really valuable, back it up in a minimum of 2 different places.