I'm trying to change the permission on the C parition but gave me this:" chown: changing ownership of `c': Operation not permitted"(as root).
thx

You're attempting to change the file permissions on a filesystem that doesn't support permissions. (Probably FAT32 or NTFS)

Are you attempting to make it so that regular users can read/write a FAT32 partition? If so, just search the fourm for 'mounting fat32 with user read write" or something similar and you will find something easily.

You are changing the owner why exactly ? If you are changing it so you can write to it, then just edit that partitions /etc/fstab entry and change "ro" to "rw", only on that partitons line, and next time you mount that partition you should be fine.

David

It won't work with NTFS partitions, as by default linux can't properly write into NTFS-formatted filesystems.
If the OP wants to interchange data between windoze and linux a-la dual-boot he should stick to a FAT32 partition, and everything should be fine.
Another tip, if you want static permissions in the whole FAT32 partition, you can set them with the umask function, you can also help yourself by giving owner and group ownerships to said filesystem instead of the root:root default. All that goes in the /etc/fstab file, check man mount most options would fit in said file

$cat fstab
/dev/hda1 /c vfat auto,rw 1 0
/dev/hda5 /d vfat auto,rw 1 0

this how it looks
It doesn't work.
thx

your fstab should look similar to:
umask=0000 lets everyone access and modify files
users lets users mount/umount this partition
auto means it's mounted on boot