II mounted my Fat32 parition and as root i can view the files, (it's windows 2000) but when i try to send a file to the partition (which is mounted at /mnt/win2k it says permission denied. Any ideas on how to properly setup permission on the 2k parition when under GNU/Linux while not breaking anything when I boot up into 2k? Thanks!

I've never had that problem with a FAT32. Don't hate me for asking this, but are you sure it's FAT and not NTFS?

At least, I haven't had problems writing to FAT32. Don't know if I've ever tried executing anything from it.

It's FAT32


[root@localhost bkeating]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 2551 5100 20482875 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 5101 5231 1052257+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 5232 9729 36130185 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 5232 9729 36130153+ 83 Linux



I know, it's rather weird... and annoying.. It's FAT32, but it's also Windows 2000, so perhaps it's a windows permissions problem? I don';t see how but perhaps thats why.

you're just mounting it incorreclty. do you have it set up in /etc/fstab? if so set an option to umask=000 or mount it on console by

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -o umask=000

should be fine then

I am having basically the same problem. I have another partition in fat32 on my hd and it mounts fine. The only problem is that the file permissions for /mnt/myfiles show up as 755. Logged in as root I can open files move files to the directory, create new directories, etc. The problem is that I cannot chmod the permissions as root to 775 to allow my login to write files to the directory. I get the error permissions cannot be changed for /mnt/myfiles.

does the -o umask=000 allow for this and if so what exactly does umask do?

I need this because I am dual booting winxp and redhat 8 on my system and want to share the directory through both winxp or rh8 when I boot up either one.

umask masks against the access rights bits. as fat32 is a very basic filesystem it doesn't have any idea about file attributes as found under unix filesystems, so you set them yourself. a set of file attributes such as 755 equates to a umask of 022 (i.e. the exact opposite bit wise) umask says what you can't do, as opposed to what you can do. so 000 will give each file rights of 777 i.e. rwxrwxrwx