HOW-TO allow normal users to write on NTFS external hard disk?

xirtyllo · 12-04-2010, 06:49 AM

hello,
i have installed Salix 13.1 LXDE version (Salix 13.1 is compatible with Slackware 13.1).

I must use various external hard disks formatted with NTFS.
The hard disks are automatically recognized and mounted with PCmanFM file manager,
but only user root can write on them.

How can I allow normal users to write on automounted external ntfs drives?

Thank You
Tommaso

SeRi@lDiE · 12-04-2010, 09:07 AM

If I am not mistaken the user has to be in the correct group "disk" to be able to write.
If thats not the case I found this from the slackwiki

Code:

Allowing users
NTFS-3G can let users other than root mount NTFS filesystems, but you'll have to set the suid flag in /bin/ntfs-3g. This applies even when using fstab with the users option.
So for this to work:
  /dev/sda1        /mnt/pendrive   ntfs-3g     noauto,users       0   0
You have to do (as root):
  # chmod 4755 /bin/ntfs-3g

http://www.slackwiki.org/NTFS-3G

rg3 · 12-04-2010, 06:14 PM

First off, what I'm going to say applies to Slackware, so I have no idea if this applies to Salix too.

I'm pretty sure activating the SUID bit in /bin/ntfs-3g is not needed and you don't need to belong to the disk group. I have an external hard drive with a NTFS filesystem and I can use it normally. HAL mounts it and I'm able to write to it. I don't recall doing anything special to be able to handle this. Have you tried giving everyone "total control" to every file in the filesystem from a Windows machine?

Code:

$ groups
users lp uucp audio video cdrom plugdev power netdev
$ ls -l /bin/ntfs-3g
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 50392 Nov  6 22:09 /bin/ntfs-3g

rworkman · 12-04-2010, 10:46 PM

You definitely don't need to be in the 'disk' group, and while suid might be useful in some cases for the ntfs-3g binary, it's not needed for what you want. On stock Slackware, this "just works" as you expect.