I need some help to modify the permissions of a partition and my distirbution is suse 10.0.

I've created a FAT32 partition but only as root I can modify the contents and I don´t know how to change the permissions of the partition so I can modify the contents as a normal user.

Any help is apreciated!!

Once you've mounted the drive, the partitions are all a function of the directory structure. If it's empty (meaning only the root ("/") directory exists), and only root has RWX access, I'd suggest creating a directory and using "chown" or "chmod" to make it so another user can modify its contents, then start reading, writing, and executing files as you will!

(an example follows)

The Fat32 filesystem does not contain linux permissions, so you can't use the chmod command. You need to set the user, group and permissions in the /etc/fstab file.

Use the umask option to allow all users full access. "umask=000" for example.
To mount the partition giving user "locke" exclusive access use the "uid=locke" option with "umask=077"

To demonstrate, let's create a 1/2 Mb file and create a vfat file system on it:
> dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile count=1024 bs=512
> /sbin/mkfs.vfat testfile

Now let's create a place to mount it:
mkdir testdir

Mounting it with umask=000 option:
sudo mount -t vfat testfile testdir/ -o loop,umask=000

mount | grep testdir
/home/username/testfile on /home/username/testdir type vfat (rw,loop=/dev/loop5,umask=000)
ls -ld testdir/
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 16384 1969-12-31 17:00 testdir/

Notice that user, group and other have full access.

sudo umount testdir
:~> sudo mount -t vfat testfile testdir/ -o loop,uid=jschiwal,gid=jschiwal,umask=007
:~> ls -ld testdir
drwxrwx--- 2 jschiwal jschiwal 16384 1969-12-31 17:00 testdir

:~> sudo touch testdir/file
:~> ls -l testdir/file
-rwxrwx--- 1 jschiwal jschiwal 0 2006-04-22 00:20 testdir/file

Notice that even though root created the testdir/file, that the permissions of the file are inherited from the way the drive was mounted.

You can also use separate fmask and dmask options instead of umask. They allow separate permissions for files and directories. This allows you to use rw- permissions for files and rwx permissions on directories. The "x" permission bit on directories allows someone to enter that directory.

:~> sudo umount testdir
:~> sudo mount -t vfat testfile testdir/ -o loop,fmask=111,dmask=000
:~> mkdir testdir/subdir
:~> touch testdir/subdir/second_file
:~> ls -lR testdir
testdir:
total 2
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 2006-04-22 00:20 file
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 2006-04-22 00:19 sample
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 2048 2006-04-22 00:23 subdir

testdir/subdir:
total 0
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 0 2006-04-22 00:23 second_file

I didn't have a vfat filesystem handy, to test this so I created a fat32 (vfat) filesystem on a file instead. In your case, don't use the option "loop".

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If your system uses the udev daemon, I think you can allow access to a usb vfat drive by making yourself a member of the "disk" group.
from /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules
KERNEL=="sg*", NAME="%k", GROUP="disk", MODE="660"
I'm not absolutely certain of this, and whether this is the purpose of the "disk" group.

Thanks a lot, editing the fstab file with the option umask=000 worked great and now I can modify the contents of the FAT32 partition as a normal user