I can't seem to change permissions on a batch of files for some odd freakin' reason
 

This is one of those... "uhh?" situations.
In general, I'm trying to give user "workstation" read/write permission to the files on the flash drive.
I can't seem to configure the box to let me do that.

Here's the dealio.
I got a flash drive with some files in it.
I've also got the flash drive tied into /etc/fstab so that the UUID is automagically recognized and it's assigned to "/media/flash1".

UUID="0EC4-B05A" /media/flash1 vfat user,auto,rw,exec 0 0

Looks good to me. I don't know why there would be any issues.

Here is /media/flash1 unmounted

drwxrwx--- 2 workstation 4096 2010-04-20 10:16 flash1

Here is /media/flash1 mounted

drwxr-xr-x 3 root 4096 1969-12-31 18:00 flash1

Here is the file I have inside that doesn't seem to give my user access (only root can save).

universe:/media/flash1# ls -g

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 16163 2010-04-16 12:58 journal.abw


As you may notice, I keep my journal on the flashdrive. I want to be able to save to it while under a non-root account. But that's not so easy for some odd reason. I don't know what is going on. When I try to do this...

universe:/media/flash1# chown -R root:workstation /media/flash1

I get this:


What is going on?
I don't quite understand it.
Maybe my skills are rusty.

In general, I'm trying to give user "workstation" read/write permission to the files on the flash drive.
I can't seem to configure the box to let me do that.

Fat doesn't have permissions.

In addition to Bratmon's post:

If you need "workstation" to own the media/files/directories, add
his UID to the fstab-line; if you just need him (and everyone else
on the machine) to be able to read-write to the device, add umask=000
to the fstab line. Of course you can do both.


Cheers,
Tink