Hello,

First post for me.

I have a Lexar 256 USB key that was formatted on a Win2k box. So it is formatted NTFS. Under Linux (RH9 2.4.20 /w NTFS read-only compiled in) I can mount the USB key and I can read from it when I am root but not as a regular user. My fstab for the USB key is:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usb auto noauto,user 0 0

I have a USB drive icon appearing on the desktop (Gnome/Bluecurve) when I mount the device (either as a normal user or as root). When I right-click to change the permissions from owner-read-write I get the following message (even as root):

"Couldn't change the permissions of "usb" because it is on a read-only disk"

So i see my problem but can't fix it. So does this mean that it is impossible for a regular user to browse a NTFS USB key if only read-only NTFS is compiled into the kernel?

Thanks

Try changing your fstab entry to this:

/dev/sda1 /mnt/usb ntfs umask=0222,auto,ro 0 0

That did it. :)

I wish umask was in the fstab man page!

Thanks

Glad to be of help!