I have a 80 gb hard drive as the third drive on a linux sytem, i was sharing 2 40 gb fat32 partitions but i wanted to try with ext3 so i created a single partition using fdisk.

I formated using : mkfs -V -t ext3 /dev/hdd1 . But when I try to mount this drive using this fstab entry

/dev/hdd1 /mnt/80gb ext3 users,owner,rw,umask=022 0 0

I get: wrong fs, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb1 or too many mounted file systems.

If i mount it using : mount /dev/hdd1 /mnt/80gb/ it mounts it without any problem. When i type mount i get

/dev/hdd1 on /mnt/80gb type ext3 (rw)

Any ideas of what could be wrong ?

only thing i notice is that i think the option for letting users mount it is "user" not "users". just guessing. maybe specifying umask in real octal would be an idea too, like umask=0022

This is my fstab, everything works like a charm except for the last line...

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

/dev/hdc5 /mnt/60gb/a vfat users,owner,rw,umask=022 0 0
/dev/hdc6 /mnt/60gb/b vfat users,owner,rw,umask=022 0 0
/dev/hdc7 /mnt/60gb/c vfat users,owner,rw,umask=022 0 0

/dev/hdd1 /mnt/80gb ext3 users,owner,rw,umask=022 0 0

For what i have read umask does not apply to ext3 :S.

How can i mount ext3 partitions with rw permision for root and ro permision for the others ?

Well, you could do that just by changing the permissions for that directory:

# chown -R root:root /mnt/80gb
# chmod -R 755 /mnt/80gb

Yes, thats a very good idea =)

And how should the line in fstab look like , to mount the ext3 partition ?

Thanks

No problem. The line in fstab would look something like:

/dev/hdd1 /mnt/80gb ext3 user 0 0

Note: Mounting a filesystem with the "rw" option seems redundant, because that is default anyway. The "owner" option is also not needed, since the "user" option is being used. Using both would also be redundant.

Thanks a lot , it is working beautifully =).

I have 2 more questions, once i change the permissions for /mnt/80gb , am i changing the permisions for all the files and directories inside ?

If i add new files will they have the same permisions, or do i have to repeat the process ?

You're very welcome. Yes, when you pass the "R" option to chmod or chown, which stands for "recursive", you are also changing the permissions of everything within that directory. And yes, if you add new files, you'll need to change the permissions of those too.

I will be adding files in a regular basis, and it is posible that other users will add files via ftp too, so i would have to change the permisions every time someone uploads a file in order for the rest of the users be able to see them ?

If that is the case:
When i worked with vfat partitions i could use the umask option to set the permisions, is there a way of doing that with an ext3 partition.

Well whenever you add a file, make sure it already has the permissions you want before putting it in there, and have the users who upload files do the same. When a file is put in that directory, its permissions won't change, they'll be the same as when they were somewhere else.

The problem is the users who upload use windows 98, there is no file pemisions in win98.

Ah, well I'm not sure what the settings default to if it didn't have permissions in the first place, but my guess is that they default to whatever the actual directory's permissions are...and if that's true, then there's no problem. Just my guess though, make sure you actually check and let me know.

I am fighting Samba right now, but so far it's beating me up :S

If i ever get it to work, i will gladly tell you about the permisions =)

Heh, alright, well good luck with that man.