Okay, this is driving me nuts. I've done searches here and thru google. I've tried all the suggestions. I can't get my everyday user to be able to write to three windows drives. They are vfat.

Here is the line from my fstab:
/dev/hda1 /xp/files vfat auto,users,async,dev,rw,gid=users,uid=bjp,mode=777,umask=000 1 0

here is the ls -al of one of the directories:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 bjp users 84868 Jun 10 20:12 cudgel61004.LOG*
-rwxrwxrwx 1 bjp users 130 Jun 8 17:05 jun04shoplist.txt*

But I still can't write. Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Barbara

Woah, that's way too many parameters. Try just this:

/dev/hda1 /xp/files vfat defaults,user,umask=000 1 0

Okay, I can't find what defaults are in this context. I want my xp drives mounted on bootup and my user needs full access.

defaults is just another option like user, umask, etc.

Open a file manager as root, and make sure the permissions for the mount point folder (in this case /xp/files) allow a user to write to the folder itself. All the fstab permissions control is the contents of the mount point, and any newly created data within the mount point, not the permissions of the mount point itself.

Basically, you own and have the rights to all of the diamonds in the safe, but you can't actually reach in and touch them, because the forcefield is still on.

Good point, motub. I checked and the permissions on /xp are:

drwxrwxrwx 5 bjp users 4096 May 28 14:56 xp/

and on the subfolders:

drwxrwxrwx 10 bjp users 8192 Dec 31 1969 cdrive/
drwxrwxrwx 10 root root 8192 Dec 31 1969 files/
drwxrwxrwx 6 bjp users 16384 Dec 31 1969 music/

It looks okay to me.

Ok, let's see if we can get to the bottom of this, as I see no obvious reason this should be happening.

Stupid question first: you are certain that this is actually a FAT32 partition, and not an NTFS partition, yes?

Semi-stupid question: what method are you using to attempt to write to this folder? Are you trying to edit a text file within the folder, and then save it? Are you trying to copy files from some other folder to this folder? If so, how are you trying to copy said files? File manager (which one?), terminal?

Stupid test second: open a terminal, browse anywhere in your /home directory and attempt to copy any stupid little useless text file (create one if you don't have one) to one of these folders using cp stupid_file.txt /xp/files. What is the output if this does not succeed?

Then su to root in the same terminal and run the same command again. Does it then work? If not, is the output different?

We really need more details on just what is failing here.