Sharing information between Linuxes with a USB device
 

Hi,

Well, the post is a little long, but I prefer to explain things the best I can...

This is what I got:

1) Home computer with Linux, where I've full administration permissions. Of course I don't use root for everything, so I have a user account with uid=500 (think so).
2) Office computer with Linux, where I've limited administration privilegies and an account with the same name that my home account but different uid.
3) A USB harddisk, that I can partition/configure as I want.

What I would like to:

1) Create a CVS Repository in the harddisk to avoid messing the copies of my files at my home's computer and in the office's computer.
2) Put other binaries in the harddisk (music, for instance) and being able to access them in both computers.

What I've tried:

1) Using a ext2/ext3 partition in the harddisk.

Then I created a mountpoint: /mnt/usbhd and added the next entry to my /etc/fstab file:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/fusbhd ext3 users,rw,exec 0 0

Problem: I was able to mount it as normal user, but couldn't write to it. I googled a little and found the "uid" option, I tried "uid" and "uid=500". Mount didn't like them and didn't mount. It seems as ext filesystems do not support this feature.

Ok I said. I'll be the only user of the harddisk anyway, so I changed the ownership of the /mnt/usbhd to belong to "me". Then I gained full access to the hardisk and anything worked fine... at home. I don't have writing permissions when I mount it in the office's computer: I think it is a problem with the fact that my uid at home and at office are different. I can't change the second and (don't know) if I could change the first (anyway, I wouldn't like to). So, what to do?? I tried this

2) Using a FAT32. No permissions nightmare this time. Don't even need to modify office's computer /etc/fstab, because it has autofs running so it creates the entry automagically, but CVS has problems: upper and lower case letters. It sometimes finds my repository, but others it cant. It says that the repository directory doesn't exist because it looks for the CAPITALIZED directory while it only exists the lower-case one.

Here is where you come guys. What do you think I could do to solve this? Any advice will be very appreciated. Thank you a lot in advance!!

Find out your uid at work, and change your home user uid to the same number?

All files would then belong to you in both locations.

Or just "chmod -R 777" the USB files so it doesn't matter what uid is used. . .

Hi,

Well "chmod 777" seems a little dangerous to me. After all, while I'm in the office I'm on a network...

About changing my uid at home, I think it a solution (I'm not sure), but I'm wondering if there are others more "elegant".

Anyway, I think there should be a better way to do so. I know Linux is not necessarily thought for the desktop, but it is becoming more common and common to have different USB drives/pens and I'm sure that other will have issues like mine.

Thank you!!