unable to write file to vfat partition from Linux

techsarge · 04-25-2003, 02:41 PM

I'm using Red Hat 9 and Open Office Writer. I wrote a short text file with Writer and tried to write it to a vfat(Win98) partition on the same hard drive. I get the following error message:

Error saving document
Write error
File could not be written

I looked at the partition info in fstab and I have it setup for "default" which should be r & w. I'm new to linux and would sure appreciate a little advice.

Thanks...

Ed

bulliver · 04-25-2003, 02:49 PM

I assume you have the partition mounted at the time?

This may be a permissions problem. Make sure that the user you are logged in as has permissions to write to the vfat partition.

Just for fun, maybe post the line in question from your fstab...

techsarge · 04-25-2003, 03:15 PM

Here is part of the output of mount.

/dev/hda1 on /mnt/hdc type vfat (rw)
/dev/hda5 on /mnt/hdd type vfat (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /mnt/hde type vfat (rw)

I'm a little confused about permissions. Can you quickly tell me how to check to see whether that's the problem?

techsarge · 04-25-2003, 03:49 PM

Bulliver...

Here's the new line in fstab:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/hdd vfat defaults,user,uid=500,gid=500 0 0

Thanks for the tip. I did a search in the forum and found what I needed. Did some reading and now I think I understand what the problem was. Thanks again and I guess I have alot to learn but the information is out there...

Ed

acid_kewpie · 04-25-2003, 03:51 PM

thtat will of course mean that only user #500 can write to it now... you could set umask=000 instead to allow everyone to write to it.

techsarge · 04-25-2003, 04:16 PM

Chris...

Thanks for your advice. I'll read up on permissions a bit more and appreciate the help.....

Ed