Filesystem Permissions
 

I have been having a heck of a time getting the permissions on a VFAT filesystem set so that other users can write to it. As root I try and change the permissions and it does nothing. I try and change the owner and it won't allow it. If I unmount the filesystem and just change the permissions on the mount point it works......until I remount the filesystem and everything reverts to the way it was. the line in my fstab file looks something like this.

/dev/hda5 /mnt/FAT32 vfat defaults 1 1

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is keeping me from allowing others to write to this harddrive?

I'm using it as network storage in a Windows workgroup using SAMBA. Samba is set to permit read/write but with no results.

I haven't done this for quite a while but here are some notes:
To make it writable for users with a group id of 500, edit the /etc/fstab file to include the following line /dev/hdb1 /mnt/win vfat gid=500,umask=002 0 0

To give the user complete control of that directory, try something like this in the fstab....
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win vfat uid=500,gid=500,umask=000 1 0

use "umask=000" in your fstab options. where do you suppose those file permission changes are being stored?? fat certyainly can't handle them...

also, change ther options at the end of that line from 1 1 to 0 0.

but ultimatwly, don't use fat32!! why are you???

It's a dual boot windows machine and I'm trying to phase out the Windows partition and convert solely to Linux. Until I get everything working though I don't want to loose workgroup access, thus FAT32. I haven't researched my alternatives fully yet either. I'm concerned about maximum directory limits. I may have to look into several partitions, one for each user. It is definitely a work in progress. Any suggestions?

what did you want suggestions about? you shouldn't really be risking any filesystem limits., but you've not really provided details about your requirements

I apologize, I was pretty vague wasn't I. I have 5 other people in the windows workgroup. My goal is to create a large shared network resource that everyone can utilize. I do occasionally store large iso images (>6GB) and I want to be sure that the file system can support that. I believe I said directory limits in my previous post, I meant file size limits. My mistake. (I currently use NTFS for for this purpose.) So my request for suggestions was in reference to a file system that I could eventually convert the FAT32 into. I am still going to do my own research of course, but sometimes the best resources are those who know the systems better than yourself. The ability to store very large files is currently my biggest concern. I'm sure I will find other positives and negatives as I proceed but maximum file size is my greatest concern right now.

an ext3 partition with a block size of 1k apparently has a max file size of 16GB. with an 4k block size, that increases to 2TB. ReiserFS can support upto 1EB.

note that you can not "convert" fat32 to a native linux filesystem, not gonna happen. and you can't use NTFS as a high capacity data store under linux. ntfs support is "beta" at best. I guarentee you 100% that you will lose data instantly if you even try using NTFS on something the size you are suggesting.