formatted external drive but has only root access

anon026 · 03-31-2020, 12:22 PM

Hello :-)

Having an issue with external drive access, and would be very grateful for advice.

Couldn't remove some trash on an external, after looking online probably because had emptied main trash/unable to restore then delete properly? Decided to format the external to ext4, as was smallest, and had done others, without the following issues, quite a while ago. Gparted required root, and now the external drive only has root access.

Tried everything, looking online at loads of things ... chmod, chown, umount (worked) but then couldn't do chmod/said no such file or directory. Tried more gparted, format, mount, etc. Then saw something about ntsfix ... keeps saying it's worked, but external drive not visible in caja, yet gparted shows it's there, either with root access only or as unknown, depending on whatever faff I'd just tried. Spacefm error along the way showed error about not being a mountable system. Tried sudo mkfs.ext4 and sudo mount, but still nothing. sudo nano /etc/fstab shows no signs of the external.

Just going in circles, and getting nowhere. No idea if this mess would happen for any new external drive in the future also, or if the issue is only this drive.

Thank you

fatmac · 03-31-2020, 01:12 PM

It is likely just a permissions problem, you can mount it as a user if you add that parameter to the mount line in your /etc/fstab file, make sure that the directory you mount it to is owned by you as well.

remmilou · 03-31-2020, 01:39 PM

Mount.
Become root (su - or sudo)
chown -R youruser:youruser /path/to/mountpoint
Or: chmod -R 777 /path/to/mountpoint

Does not work on NTFS or FAT. Only on Linux filesystems

sevendogsbsd · 03-31-2020, 01:42 PM

Never set perms to 777 in this situation, this is not a good idea. In the windows world, people set perms to "everyone" when they can't figure out how to make something work. Not the way to do this in Linux.

Better would be 0750.

ondoho · 03-31-2020, 02:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by remmilou

Become root (su - or sudo)
Mount.
chown -R youruser:youruser /path/to/mountpoint

FTFY

BW-userx · 03-31-2020, 03:56 PM

all partitioning and formatting is of root user, therefore root gets permissions added onto them, then you have to change the permissions to allow other than root to access the partitions, this is not true with ntfs formatting.

remmilou · 04-01-2020, 01:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sevendogsbsd

Never set perms to 777 in this situation, this is not a good idea. In the windows world, people set perms to "everyone" when they can't figure out how to make something work. Not the way to do this in Linux.

Better would be 0750.

You are absolutely right!
This was only "quick and dirty".
And admitted: After a year everybody sees it was dirty and no on remembers it was quick...

ondoho · 04-01-2020, 02:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by remmilou

This was only "quick and dirty".

And dangerous - it's this sort of stuff that makes malware work.

anon026 · 04-01-2020, 12:34 PM

Hello :-)
Sorry for delay in replying; no notifications. Thank you for responses; really appreciate. I've tried the things below:

reformatted again as ext4, to be doubly sure

sudo chmod -R 0750 /run/media/wellspring/Passport
still blinking light/only root access [doesn't normally blink non-stop]

sudo chown -R wellspring:wellspring /run/media/wellspring/Passport
chown: invalid group: ‘wellspring:wellspring’

└─sdb1 8:17 0 1.8T 0 part /run/media/wellspring/Passport

Unfortunately trying to format it as ntfs isn't any different, except that the drive isn't blinking. Really would prefer ext4/proper linux format, but just trying to see if anything will format this drive as not just root access.

Sorry, I should have said it's a 2tb WD My Passport Ultra, and have had it I think over 18 months+.

BW-userx · 04-01-2020, 01:02 PM

Code:

id

to get your user and primary group
ie

Code:

$ id
uid=1000(userx) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),7(lp),10(wheel),11(floppy),17(audio),18(video),19(cdrom),71(input),83(plugdev),84(power),86(netdev),93(scanner)

would then be
userx:users
or cat /etc/group to check for groups and spellings

anon026 · 04-01-2020, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BW-userx

Code:

id

to get your user and primary group
ie

Code:

$ id
uid=1000(userx) gid=100(users) groups=100(users),7(lp),10(wheel),11(floppy),17(audio),18(video),19(cdrom),71(input),83(plugdev),84(power),86(netdev),93(scanner)

would then be
userx:users
or cat /etc/group to check for groups and spellings

Thank you for further advice; will make a note to learn about that. I was just coming back to the thread to report that I tried formatting the drive to FAT32 and it's actually working! :-)

sevendogsbsd · 04-01-2020, 01:27 PM

So, FYI: FAT and FAT32 file systems do not have the concept of permissions. If that file system is fine for you then good, but if you need ext4, you will need to set permissions on the drive.

BW-userx · 04-01-2020, 01:42 PM

its fat? Now I get informed.

Windows formate types do not have linux permissions, you should be able to just read/write to them.
they will NOT run a Linux executable on them either. they are Windows, not Linux.

anon026 · 04-01-2020, 03:22 PM

Thank you very much for further replies. I'd tried to format it to fat32 after happening to see a video thumbnail today that said fat32 covers all platforms. Was surprised it worked, after all attempts at ext4 and ntfs etc. Previously formatting drives to ext4 didn't block normal access, so hitting whatever has changed hasn't been pleasant. Am fully linux, no dual boot, etc, but will need to settle for fat32 for this drive. Will be sure to remember about executables.

sevendogsbsd · 04-01-2020, 03:27 PM

If you are only going to access this drive from Linux, ext4 is a better choice, but if you MAY access it from Windows or Mac, then FAT32 is a better choice. NTFS is a bad choice all around, unless it is only accessed from Windows.