Hi all, linux n00b (but learning quik )

- how do you automount a fat32 drive so it doesn't come up as owned by root? (as its fat32 even if you log in as root you can't seem to change the permissions) This is so I don't have to log in as root just to let my windoze machine write to my samba shares on the fat32 drive.
- Am I correct in assuming that you can't change the owner / permissions on fat32 files / directories as the fat32 file system does not support these features, springing from a single user OS?

My current fstab line (working, but its read only unless u log in as root, which is annoying!)
- /dev/hdc1 /archive vfat auto,user,rw 0 0

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers!

This is what my fstab entry under Vector5 looks like for my Fat32 partition

/dev/hdc4 /mnt/hda4 vfat umask=0,quiet,shortname=mixed 0 0

what they all mean not sure .. but "user,rw" should usually work I guess .

"My current fstab line (working, but its read only unless u log in as root, which is annoying!)
- /dev/hdc1 /archive vfat auto,user,rw 0 0"

does that mean that a normal user does not have read access to /etc/fstab ?
If .. then I guess that might be your problem ... maybe .

Does the normal user on your system have read access to /archive & /dev/hdc1 ... I might be talking rubbish .. but I have the slight
feeling that I have some vague idea .. :-)

.... I think you are right with not being able to change permissions .
I guess one would have to use something like UMSDOS to make it accessible for windows or
of course there is somewhere an ext2 driver for windows as a last resort .

Based on the Ubuntu Guide...

http://ubuntuguide.org/#automountfat

... I'd say the line in your /etc/fstab file should read
/dev/hdc1 /archive vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

Give it a shot.