Hi again, just thought that it was time for me to branch out from linux newbie's. I still feel that there is a lot to learn, but posting in the right place seemed the right thing to do.

Trying all distros - at the moment I thought I'd give mandriva a look. I have an extra hard drive and a maxtor one touch hooked up to the computer. I have sorted out the problem of user access in regard to mounting and unmounting the above hard drives, but I still can't create folders on the drives or copy stuff to them either as user?!!

I have looked at configure your computer and mount points - but can't see how to get read and write privileges? There is no point if I can't use my own computer - if you know what I mean.

Is there any one that can enlighten me a little on this matter.

bookie

To mount a drive you will need to be root. Another way to do it is to give user sudo privileges. A user can run a command as root using users password. You need to edit the sudoers file for that.

As far as access to files and folders make sure user has access privileges to it. Look at
If you want to change ownership of the file look at
If it is a smb or nfs share then users will have to have permission to it.

You can also open a file mgr as root and change permissions on a file or directory.

Are you trying to write to an ntfs file system? If you are, you should install the ntfs-3g package using the package manager which will ask to install any other required packages. To make set up easier, install ntfs-config. After these packages are installed run the NTFS Configuration Tool (System > Configuration > Hardware > NTFS Configuration Tool in the menu system)

Other than writing to a directory in your Windows ntfs file system, if you are trying to write to any directory in the Linux file system, you have to have the authority to do so. Regular users usually have authority to write to their home directory and its sub-directories, but no where else.

HTH,

I already understand that as user one usually only has read write access to home folder. But - this is my own computer and I don't want to sit and work from a terminal - logged in as root to create and send folders to the extra hard drives. While using the terminal has its obvious advantages - it is a bit tedious to do basic commands from a terminal.

I have created root. I am root even if I do, as everyone says, and try and work as user. One cannot log in as root with mandriva and certain other distros because of the security aspect of things.

I am not working with windows ntfs or anything like that. I just want read and write privileges for my own computer otherwise there isn't a lot of point in working with linux?!!!

Sorry, frustration getting the better of me at the moment. Obviously I wouldn't allow every user on the computer the same read/write privileges - for basic security reasons, and the fact that it is easy to break the distro.

There isn't any point in being able to mount the drives, open and use the info on the drives, if I can't add info??

bookie

I assume that you've mounted the drive as read/write.

If you're using KDE:

Select the Run command in the mdv menu

Enter kdesu konqueror

From the Settings menu select the File Management profile

Right-click on the folder where you mounted the drive

Select Properties and then Permissions

Make yourself the owner

Set what you want other users to be able to do

Check the box to apply to subfolders and contents

I assume the equivalent can be done in Gnome, somehow, but I don't use Gnome.

Jim

Thanks for the info - consider yourself on my Christmas list.
I now have privileges as I want them - YES!!!
What's the weather like down in your part of the world? Ages since I was in Scotland - beautiful country!!

Thanks again.
bookie

PS Look to Sweden and around about the middle by the coast. There you will find the town I live in Sundsvall.

I tried to do this, but when I did I get messages telling me that I do not have sufficient permission to change the properties for one or two select files on my NTFS volume. I don't understand what the deal is. I don't have this problem in Kubuntu, but through 3 or 4 versions of Mandriva I am unable to get write ability on my NTFS volumes except as root.

I even downloaded the same "ntfs-config" that Kubuntu uses, as it is available from Mandriva, but it won't launch; I get the message, "The gksu-run-helper command was not found or is not executable." This though I have every conceivable gksu file installed. I can launch gksu manually, and enter the command (ntfs-config, which is what the normal launch command for the ntfs config utility), with the same results.

Any ideas, info or suggestions are most welcome. Thanks inadvance!

Are ntfs-3g and all dependencies installed? If not install them using the package manager or urpmi. When I had WinXP on the HD (not in a VM) here for a time, I installed them, then ran the ntfs configuration tool to set up write capability on Linux here. All went well ...

Though I have been working with Desktop Linux for quite some time, I am hardly an experienced, knowledgeable Linux user; there is so much that I don't know. I never could get the solution posted by jkerr82508 to work. However, the problem that I was having with ntfs-config was caused by the simplest of noob problems. This is so embarrassing, but I was not logged in as root...thank you, thank you very much for that applause! Once I realized this, I immediately had user-level write access to the internal NTFS volume. I still have only read-access to the external, but I can live with that.

Thanks for taking the time to offer assistance!

Hi nYdGeo, we all make the mistake of not logging in as root at times. I am glad that you sorted out the problem.


Bookie