Gnome can't set file permissions

Itsamnaaj · 04-28-2009, 10:44 AM

Hello everyone, I have a tiny problem in Gnome 2.24 on Gentoo/amd64.

Not long ago I bought a 1 TB SATA hard drive. Being influenced by FreeBSD as I am, I partitioned it up into 7 partitions: /boot, swap, /, /var, /tmp, /usr and /home. However, upon switching to Gnome from Xfce I started noticing small problems in Gnome. Nautilus, and most other programs trying to access my /home folder, were blatantly ignoring my file permissions (which are set to 777). Neither logged in as user nor root could I change the file permissions in Nautilus. Here's what the Nautilus info window looks like:

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/5...ermissions.png

Here's my /etc/fstab:

Code:

/dev/sda1		/boot		ext2		noauto,noatime	1 2
/dev/sda2		none		swap		sw	0 0
/dev/sda4		/		ext4		noatime	0 1
/dev/sda5		/var		ext4		noatime	0 0
/dev/sda6		/tmp		ext4		noatime	0 0
/dev/sda7		/usr		ext4		noatime	0 0
/dev/sda8		/home   	ext4		noatime,users,rw,exec	1 2
/dev/scd0		/mnt/cdrom	auto		noauto,ro	0 0
shm			/dev/shm	tmpfs           nodev,nosuid,noexec        0 0

All my /home permissions are rwxrwxrwx.

I have already tried all the humanly possible with octal permissions, /etc/fstab and GDM configuration (I set RelaxPermissions=2 in GDM's custom.conf). So my question is this: how do I enable every program to write to my /home partition?

Thanks in advance,

Itzamna

barunparichha · 04-29-2009, 07:05 AM

login as root.

chmod -R 777 /home

jschiwal · 04-29-2009, 07:19 AM

Why do you want execution permissions on all files? Also allowing "others" full access?

Look at "help umask" in the bash shell. You can change it (e.g. add "umask 000" to ~/.profile) to stop masking out bits on newly created files.

Itsamnaaj · 04-29-2009, 07:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barunparichha

login as root.

chmod -R 777 /home

Hello Barunparichha,

Thanks for your response, but it says in my post I've done that already.

Itsamnaaj · 04-29-2009, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jschiwal

Why do you want execution permissions on all files? Also allowing "others" full access?

Hello Jschiwal,

Setting octal permissions to 777 was a last resort, I really want 755 permissions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jschiwal

Look at "help umask" in the bash shell. You can change it (e.g. add "umask 000" to ~/.profile) to stop masking out bits on newly created files.

I believe I already tried fiddling with umask options, but I'll see whether this helps. Thanks for your response!

barunparichha · 04-29-2009, 07:26 AM

check your umask value
$umask

If you are not changing the file permissions using -R, the change will not affect the contents inside.

Itsamnaaj · 04-29-2009, 07:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barunparichha

check your umask value
$umask

If you are not changing the file permissions using -R, the change will not affect the contents inside.

Hello Barunparichha,

I always use the recursive ( -R ) option. If you look at my screenshot, you'll see the folder permissions are interpreted as 777 by Nautilus as well, but somehow it regards file access as '000'. I'd like to find out how to govern file permissions (as opposed to folder permissions, which are fine).

I also typed $umask as user and superuser, but it generates no output. (?)

Itsamnaaj · 04-29-2009, 07:48 AM

@ Jschiwal,

I have added 'umask 022' (for 755 permissions) to ~/.bash_profile and ~/.profile, but still Gnome can't handle file permissions. Also, if I summon the properties window of a drive or partition from the desktop, Nautilus complains that it can't determine the permissions:

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/6...enshot1tnq.png

The fear that this is a horrible bug is growing. Did I mention all my partitions (except /boot) are ext4?

Itsamnaaj · 04-29-2009, 09:49 AM

I have devised a workaround for my specific problem, Wine now works perfectly. If you want to know exactly what solution I came up with, check:

http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=23911#23911