External Hard Drive Write Permission Problem

RazielX · 09-01-2007, 09:44 AM

Hi everyone. I have an issue with a new external hard drive I bought the other day. I split it into two partitions and formatted them both to use the ext3 file system. However, I only have read permissions to the drives. When I run mount, I get this:

Quote:

/dev/hdb1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /media/Music type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sda2 on /media/Samba-Share type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev)

/dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 are the two partitions of the external hard drive.

I also tried chmodding both partitions to include write access to no avail. Could anyone help me with my dilemma?

jschiwal · 09-01-2007, 09:52 AM

Use the "chown" and "chmod" commands as root to change the ownership and permissions of an ext3 filesystem.

I would recommend using the "user" option in your /etc/fstab entry. Also use either a LABEL=<label> or UUID=<uuid number> entry instead of a device. An external USB or Firewire drive may use a different device the next time you reboot.

Here is an example of an XFS filesystem on an external drive:

Code:

udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sda1
ID_VENDOR=Maxtor_6
ID_MODEL=Y250P0
ID_REVISION=YAR4
ID_SERIAL=Maxtor_6_Y250P0_0332005C
ID_TYPE=disk
ID_BUS=usb
ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:02.2-usb-0:1:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
ID_EDD=int13_dev81
ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=xfs
ID_FS_VERSION=
ID_FS_UUID=b545812a-57af-43e8-bbd8-f9b43dd25fc8
ID_FS_LABEL=NetDisk
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=NetDisk

My fstab entry looks like this:

Code:

LABEL=NetDisk   /media/NetDisk  xfs     defaults,user,noauto 0 0

The user lets me as a normal user mount the drive without using sudo. The noauto will prevent the system from stalling during a reboot if the drive isn't available.

As an alternative you could rely totally on the udev/hal system to automount the drive when you insert it.

RazielX · 09-02-2007, 09:45 AM

Thanks for your help! What ended up fixing my problem was putting the following lines into my fstab:

Quote:

# Entry for Music
LABEL=Music /media/Music ext3 defaults,user 0 0
# Entry fo Samba-Share
LABEL=Samba-Share /media/Samba-Share ext3 defaults,user 0 0

I took out noauto because I want them to mount on boot. Afterwards, I chmodded both drives (/media/Music and /media/Samba-Share) to give everyone write access.

Thanks again for your help!