I'm running a dual boot system with Redhat 9.0 and Windows XP. The system has two 250GB hard drives -- one for windows and one for linux. I also have an external hard drive that connects via USB or firewire.

I want to be able to see the VFAT disks while running in Linux (one is the windows harddrive and one is an external disk).

While logged in as Root I have been able to mount both drives and can read and write to both of them. I am even able to place a desktop link to both drives. So far, so good.

Then when I log in as a user, the desktop links are gone. The drives are still mounted (because they are listed in fstab) although I need to get to them within /mnt. But the drives are Read Only. I cannot write to them.

So, I log back in as root and try to change the permissions on these drives. The premissions says they belong to root and to the group root. However, when I try to change the permissions I get the response: "These permissions cannot be changed by root."

I've tried the right click to access "properties" and the went to the permissions tab. I've tried chmod while running terminal. All give me versions of the same error message. Root cannot change these permissions.

So, if root cannot change the permissions, who can? How can I get access to these disks when I am something other than the Superuser?

Thanks for your help.

@the permissions problem: I would tend to guess that you created the folders in the /mnt folder using root, and thus, they can only be accessed by root. A mounted file system's permissions cannot be changed by any user I think (someone correct me if I am wrong). I suggest you try to unmount them, change the permissions to the physical folders, and mount them again using the "rw" option.

mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows/ -o rw

@changing to read-only: Are you sure you specified the "rw" option in fstab? List your /etc/fstab file so I can figure out if anything looks wierd.

Here you go:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/282478

Works like a charm. You guys are great.

Now for the real newbie question: How would I have found the answer to this, or a similar question, without this service? I have serveral linux books -- two of the really big fat ones on Red Hat, plus about six of the smaller ones -- and none of them discuss fstab in a way that would have led me to this answer.