making drives mountable and writable by non-root users in fstab

asdfjkl · 10-17-2004, 10:39 PM

Hi, as the subject states, I'm having problems mounting and writing to some of my drives, namely my windows hd, zip drive, and cdrom. I can mount the zip drive (the windows hd is mounted at bootup) and I can read them all as root. I would like to be able to mount and umount both the cdrom and zip, and to read and write to the windows drive (mounted at /windows). I'm pretty sure this has something to do with /etc/fstab. here's my file:

Code:

/dev/hdb5        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/hdb1        /                reiserfs    defaults         1   1
/dev/hdb6        /home            ext3        defaults         1   2
/dev/hda1        /windows         vfat        defaults         1   1 
/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom       iso9660     noauto,owner,ro  0   0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy      auto        noauto,owner     0   0
devpts           /dev/pts         devpts      gid=5,mode=620   0   0
proc             /proc            proc        defaults         0   0
/dev/hde4        /mnt/zip         auto        noauto,owner     1   1

do the numbers on the right dictate the read/write capabilites of the user?

CroMagnon · 10-17-2004, 11:23 PM

The numbers on the right are something else entirely (check the man page for fstab if you want to know the details - they're for fscking and backing up). For your cdrom and zip drive, try adding ",user" to the options section. This will allow regular users to mount and unmount that filesystem.

kilgoretrout · 10-17-2004, 11:31 PM

Changes:

/dev/hda1 /windows vfat defaults,umask=0 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0
/dev/hde4 /mnt/zip vfat user,noauto,umask=0,defaults 0 0

You may also have to change the permissions on /dev/cdrom but try the above and see if it works and allows you to mount the cd drive. Is that an ide zip drive? Usb zip drives are usually designated /dev/sda4. The trailling digits designate the type of filesystem checks that are performed on boot and have nothing to do with permissions. Vfat(FAT32) should have a trailing "0 0". "User" is normally used to give ordinary users the right to mount, a right which is normally reserved for root. "Umask=0" is used to give ordinary users write permission to a FAT32 file system.

asdfjkl · 10-18-2004, 10:05 PM

Yes, hde4 is indeed an IDE zip drive. sorry I didn't specify that, i have tried changing the permissions in, say, konqueror as root(rightclick, properties, permissions), but that doesn't work.

Anyway, thank you both very much for the detailed replies. kilgoretrout, i will try your recommendations and reboot to test.

asdfjkl · 10-19-2004, 07:59 PM

works! thank you very much.

J.W. · 10-19-2004, 10:10 PM

asdfjkl; - congrats on solving the problem and thanks for posting back with the solution. That will be a huge help to any future readers with the same issue.

Also big thanks to CroMagnon and kilgoretrout for taking the time to respond. Thanks both of you -- J.W.