Hello,

I have a Windows partition (FAT32) that I mount in the winG directory :

The problem is :

when this partition is unmounted the winG drectory have all permissions :

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 16 2002 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 31 21:44 cdrom2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 16 2002 floppy
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 12288 Dec 2 16:16 winC
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Dec 6 20:21 winF
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 7 13:33 winG
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Dec 2 16:15 winH

so, as a normal user ( not root ) I'm able to enter on it.

when the partition is mounted the permissions change:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 16 2002 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 31 21:44 cdrom2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 16 2002 floppy
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 12288 Dec 2 16:16 winC
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Dec 6 20:21 winF
drwxr--r-- 5 root root 16384 Jan 1 1970 winG
dr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Dec 2 16:15 winH

in this case only root is able to get into the directory !!!!!

I tried to change the permissions with :

chmod -v 777 /mnt/winG

The system tell me the permissions are changed but wen I type ls -l i see that
nothing is changed.

I cannot see why ?????

Should anyone help me ???

Tanks in advance.

I think you want:

/dev/hdb3 /mnt/winG vfat defaults,umask=022 0 0

in your /etc/fstab.

I think the explanation is since FAT filesystems have no concept of different users Linux has to work out some way of resolving ownership and permissions. This happens at mount time, explaining why your attempts to change permissions after mount time had no effect.

By using the umask option you set this up at mount time.

If anyone has a better explanation please offer it!

You can also set the user id and group id of the files on fat, vfat, and msdos filesystems; see man mount and look for "Mount options for fat". I use the uid and gid options on my windows partition to make the files belong to me, and I mount it inside my own home directory; they're my files after all.

Lyle