Problem with user accessing USB Harddrive

jstars · 06-19-2005, 11:30 AM

I originally sought help with this at suseforums.net but without successful solution. My problem is that I have a USB external harddrive that mounts successfully but does not give users access (only root). The device is dev/sda1. The drive is formatted as NTFS which shouldn't pose a problem for read access -- yet despite my attempts to change the permissions, only root has read access.

It was suggested this had something to do with the subfs (which I am not clear on). Is there a solution to this so users can have access to this drive when it is plugged in?

See my attempt to access below in the /media directory. "BACKUP" is the volume label for the USB HD in question:

Code:

alfred@linux:~> cd /media
alfred@linux:/media> ls -l
total 0
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root  0 2005-06-19 10:19 BACKUP
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 48 2005-03-23 08:30 bmp_audio_cd
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 48 2005-06-12 08:29 cdrecorder
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 48 2005-06-12 08:29 cdrom
drwxrwxrwx  1 root root  0 2005-06-19 09:32 floppy
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 48 2005-06-12 22:39 SU930_002
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 48 2005-06-12 09:27 SU930_003
alfred@linux:/media> cd BACKUP
alfred@linux:/media/BACKUP> ls
/bin/ls: .: Permission denied

randomx · 06-20-2005, 03:53 AM

Can you change the permissions to that directory?

maybe a chown/chgrp/chmod command combo?...just a thought...

oneandoneis2 · 06-20-2005, 04:09 AM

Post the contents of your /etc/fstab file

jstars · 06-20-2005, 09:40 PM

my /etc/fstab is as follows:

Code:

/dev/hda3            /                    reiserfs   acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/hda1            /windows/C           ntfs       ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hdb1            /windows/D           vfat       users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/sda1            /windows/E           ntfs       ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda2            swap                 swap       pri=42                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
/dev/cdrecorder      /media/cdrecorder    subfs      noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/cdrom           /media/cdrom         subfs      noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0             /media/floppy        subfs      noauto,fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0

To answer the previous poster I haven't tried changing permissions on anything as my understanding is that the permissions say I should have access. Either way I am not too sure what files I should change permissions on.

Ben Sytko · 07-17-2005, 01:55 PM

I am having the exact same problem, using Suse 9.3 as well. Did you ever manage to solve it?

jstars · 07-20-2005, 11:00 PM

Unfortunately no luck. See a thread in another forum that I posted which suggested complaining to SuSE about an odd subfs (which I don't know much about).

IamSpOOk · 07-29-2005, 08:12 AM

I'm working this as a possible udev permission issue. Refer to the other thread mentioned above.
Still working on it.

But another avenue to look at is how the hell the device gets mount options. It sure doesn't
seem to be from /etc/fstab. In fact, there is some code, in /etc/hotplug/hotplug.subfs.functions
and in there, there are 'if' blocks with matches for subfs types and then code to set the
fsoptions.

use the command:
mount
to see the options that were used to mount a devide. They don't match what's in fstab
for the usb device.

I tried adding 'user' as described in
man mount
to that code but it does not seem to get executed. Additionally, there is a worrysome comment
at the top of that file:

# this options are not used currently (SUSE 9.3)
: ${HOTPLUG_DO_MOUNT:=yes}
: ${HOTPLUG_MOUNT_TYPE:=subfs}
: ${HOTPLUG_MOUNT_SYNC:=yes

For those of you who want a workaround - see the other thread in the other forum mentioned in earlier post.

IamSpOOk · 07-29-2005, 08:18 AM

See also :

http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/in...4&#entry103394

That's the thread that I thought was referred to earlier.

ghight · 07-29-2005, 02:22 PM

This isn't pretty but the easiest thing you can do is manually mount the drive in /mnt/. This may involve umounting it from media when it's autodetected, but you can then remounting it with the permissions and ownership of your choice to /mnt/usb_drive or something like that. It works for me.