Changing Directory Permissions
 

I am relatively new to Linux. I have Fedora 5 and XP home in a dual boot configuration on my main desktop, with each O/S on its own HD. On the XP drive I have created a small FAT 32 partition as a place to share files between the two systems. I can copy files from my Linux O/S to the FAT 32 partition as root, but not as user. Umask shows that write is blocked, and chmod seems to have no effect. I've tried chown, but that is denied as well.

I know this is a very basic question, but my Fedora manual has been no help so far: How do I change the permissions for FAT 32 partition in Linux so I can have rwx permission as user?

My experience with FAT 32 is that the owner *and* permissions are set at the time the partition is mounted, and can't be changed afterwards w/o unmounting. All directories and files within a given FAT 32 partition will have the same owner and permissions. The owner is the user who mounts it, and the permisions are determined by that user's umask at time of mount. You can overide the existing owner/group and umask by specifying uid= , gid= , and umask= options with the mount command, or in the /etc/fstab file. Check the mount man page for more info.

Changing directory permissions
 

Blackhole 54

Thanks for your prompt response and sound advice. I added a line to the fstab file with the uid option and -- bingo -- the vfat partition loads automatically on boot and I have read-write authority.