Hello, has anyone experienced this?

Under Security level 3 (Mandrake 10.1 Community Edition), my documents under /mnt/windows partition are accessible to users only in read but they cannot be edited.

For example, opening a document with OpenOffice is only available in «_read_» mode.
I have to run it as root to be able to edit any file.

I seem to have the solution: I edited the file /etc/fstab with VI editor:

the line:

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows vfat umask=0022,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0

was modified to:

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0

then reboot the computer. Now permissions for /mnt/windows are 777. o.k!

However, after more than one week without checking it, I browsed with Konqueror /mnt/windows/ but heck, again! I cannot have acces to fucking /mnt/windows !

I checked the /etc/fstab file and the change I made is there, but it is not giving me the permissions it is supposed to give. What is the problem????

I decided to change once more that line to this:

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,user,auto,umask=000 0 0

I reboot. ... and I see that /mnt/windows is accessible. Fine!!

But if I open a document of /mnt/windows from linux (OpenOffice), and indeed it opens nicely, at the same time Konqueror shows that I just have lost permission to access that partition again; I have to boot to get /etc/fstab to restore permissions and accessibility.

This same problem happens immediately after I move folders from /mnt/windows to my /home partition linux. Is this a known bug? Or else? Which software would be causing this problem, KDE? If so, I am running KDE 3.2.3


Your comments would be grately appreciated.

Maxei DeVraie

I believe that only root should have access to anything in /mnt. Root owns /mnt
If you want user access then mount it to /home/user/somewhere

Root should own /mnt and /mnt/windows (the mountpoint) but that doesn't stop you mounting your Windows partition with umask=0 to allow anyone to write to the files within that partition. Its not the permissions on the mountpoint that cause problems like this but the permission mask that's applied to the partition when its mounted (since FAT partitions don't have permissions at all).

Maxei try lowering the security level - its most likely msec that is changing this. In fact the way you've described it - it reverts regularly but at seemingly random times not related to anything you're doing manually - I'd be almost certain that msec is the cause of this problem.

Also you don't need to reboot to make changes to mount options - just unmount and re-mount the partition. You say you're running 10.1 community - the community editions of Mandrake were little better than betas and were very buggy. Have you been keeping up with updates from Mandrake Update?

Hey,

I've had a similar problem. However, instead of trying to increase permissions, I'm trying to restrict certain users from having read permissions to /mnt/windows but despite what the output tells me, the permissions don't actually change.
Unless I'm mistaken, the same principles should fix both our problems, so if you can help, please explain so as to help both Maxei and I.

Thanks,

Steve

Thanks for your comments folks, especially you, tkedwards.

You are probably right that there is a bug in my system, as I have not made updates....everything else seems to work nicely!

Well, I will not reduce my security level, it is too risky the trade off.

Actually, thanks for your tip: I dont have to boot again anymore. I followed your advice:

$sudo umount /mnt/windows
Password:
$sudo mount /mnt/windows
Password:

Then I see in Konqueror that the padlock in the /mnt/windows icon folder disapears and have access again. Not bad at all for typing a few lines!

Maxei DeVraie

You should be able to remount in a single command (in this case, as root):

mount -o remount /mnt/windows

-Alan

Alan,

I followed your method; I did not work for me.

I am using the two commands separately, first umount (because it IS mounted) , then I issue the mount command. This way it works.


[PS: I see that /mnt/windows gets locked again after, say half an hour since last time I fixed it. Definitely, this problem is caused by something within the system. Have to live with that. Good thing is that I dont have to go there but quite rarely. I just keep Windows 98 because there is nothing better that DVDSHRINK available in linux. To backup my DVD in Linux, I have used DVD::rip. It took more than 24 hours to get a movie into two CD as .avi ; Imagine! DVDShrink does a better job in ONLY 40 minutes in this same machine. Someone knows if a DVDShrink-like for Linux exists?].

Maxei Devraie

DVDshrink for linux: http://dvdshrink.sourceforge.net/

I've had some success with it but on some disks it has errors, whereas the Windows dvdshrink works.