Hi,

In my case, I have a computer with several users, and it's possible that some of the participants will use their own USB keys to work on the machine in question.

How can I make sure that once the USB stick is plugged in, it's available in rw on all users, and that it doesn't mount in the current user's directory?

I've seen that it's possible to assign rules in the fstab configuration, but this requires (as far as I know) entering the corresponding UUID of the USB key, which isn't possible in my case as it's never the same keys.

To put it simply, I'd like it to work like Windows: when a USB key is plugged in, it's available to all users.

Thanks in advance.

Find out what the kernel calls the usb drive by plugging it in and running It's /dev/sdb on most setups, but not always. I once had a printer with a built-in disk drive and my kernel registered that as /dev/sdb and usb keys as /dev/sdc.

Whatever drive designation the kernel uses, use that in /etc/fstab. You don't have to use UUIDs.

The Linux systems I've used generally mount external devices under /media or /run directories not the user /home directory. If I understand your post, there will be several users on this computer and they will likely use their own usb sticks (multiple) and you want all of them to have total access to any usb to write to and/or delete anything on the usb, is that correct? If you give users write permissions, you give them permission to delete. What filesystem type would you expect to be on them? Would this be expected to vary? If you expect windows filesystems, the method will be a bit different.

Hi,

Yes, it's /dev/sdb in my case too, Would you have an example of configuration for the file? Should I put something like /dev/sdbXX or maybe /dev/sdb* so that any plug-in key works?

Thanks

Here is a line from my fstab:
"user" means that anyone can mount a device but only the same person can unmount it. "noauto" prevents the startup scripts from trying to automatically mount a plugin device that isn't there.

I don't know if you can allow for different partitioning models. When you buy a memory stick, it typically has a single partition formatted as vfat because it's designed for Windows users. They probably wouldn't repartition the drive but a Linux user might.

Hi,

Yes, that's right, I'd like them to have full access. In my case, it's in the /etc/currentuser directory. When I connect to another user, since the key was mounted in the first user's directory, I don't have access rights. With the number of USB keys that will be plugged into this computer, it's impossible to make a specific configuration per key. I think the file system will be NTFS, FAT32 or ext4.

Then you might want to put auto as the type.

Thanks for the explanations, I'll try like this.

Note that for most usb devices there will be no partitioning done at the time purchased and they usually will be formatted as vfat. That means most devices would be seen as /dev/sdb and not /dev/sdb1 for mounting.

Also, if there is more than one device plugged in at a time they would get in sequence differing names such as sdb for the first one, sdc for the next, etc. Each would need its own mount point as well as accounting for the differing device names.

If you used the same mount point for all then only the last one mounted would be accessible as it would be mounted 'over' the previous one and the earlier one would no longer be accessible. That is a recipe for data disaster if files were open on one device then another is mounted and blocks access to the first.

I do have a few older flash drives that do not have a partition but I would say in general that most do.
Typically how they are formatted just depends on the manufacture and sometimes by size i.e. <32GB either FAT32 or exFAT and >32GB NTFS or maybe exFAT.

What distribution / version is running on this system?

Since how permissions work are different between Windows, flash drives are typically automatically mounted with read/write only for that user that is currently logged in. A custom udev rule might be necessary to mount a flash drive for access by all users.

The last two that I bought from a stationery shop had a partition table and a single vfat partition. The kernel registers them as sdb, sdb1.