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digitalwavFlag for United States of America

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Full rights on locally mounted VFAT partitions/drives

I've got fstab mounting all of my various partitions and removable drives (ls120, cd etc) into the /mnt area. The problem I'm encountering is that no one can write to any of these, only read. I need to ensure that all users on the Linux system can have full rights to all of these mounts- they are all VFAT file systems.

Thanks.
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ahoffmann
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use following mount options (see man mount for details):
  uid=
  gid=
  umask=
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ASKER

Which uid and gid should be used for everyone to have the same rights?
Which uid and gid should be used for everyone to have the same rights?
a uid, gid where the user has propper permissions, means that the files and dirs need to have permission 77X or alike
Ok, what about nfs shares? I get similar problems there. One user creates a file, no one else can modify it. They can see it, but it's locked. Is that a gid thing at the nfs export area?
NFS is host-based, not user-based (on server-side)
It all depends on the directoy and file permissions set by the creator/owner.
So the owner of a file needs to grant permissions to others (group members or whatever).
Probably you just need to set the umask in your shell, use 002 instead of 022
Ok, I'm all confused. My FSTAB file has the following line for my 4th partition which is my windows root partition:

/dev/hdc4               /mnt/windoz            vfat    noauto,owner,rw 0 0

How does one set this so that it is rw for everyone?
set the uid= gid= and umask= options in the options field of your /etc/fstab
what do I set them to? the vfat partition has no "linux" permissions. Should I just make a group and add all the linux users to it and set the gid and uid to that group id?
> what do I set them to?
whatever you like (and is defined in /etc/{passwd,group})

> the vfat partition has no "linux" permissions
no the partition itself not, but the mounted one has (as specified in /etc/fstab)

> Should I just make a group and add all the linux users to it and set the gid and uid to that group id?
yes, such a group makes sence, but you need a own user as owner.
Or simply set the whole mount point to have permissions 777, which makes the group thing unneccessary.
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debiansid

hey dude,

here it is:

/dev/hdc4               /mnt/windoz          vfat    noauto,user,rw 0 0

cheers :)
with the above, though, the one who mounts the filesystem, owns it. the solution could be to set individual mount points for people in their own home directories.
That must be the problem. These mounts can only be done by root. How does one allow the individual users to mount things?
noooo.... with the above edited line in fstab, any user can mount the filesystem. but if user1 mounts the filesystem, user2 won't get acces to it. only user1 gets access to it.
It doesn't work. It says: 'mount: only root can do that'
debiansid's suggestion needs some pre-conditions.
And it has the restriction of "first comes, first wins". Probably not what's requiered here.
See my uid= etc. suggestion for a solution.
Ok, this is driving me crazy. I've tried the suggestions and they just don't work. below is the full contents of my fstab file. I also find it odd that when root issues the "mount -a" command, the /dev/hd series isn't mounted. I would expect these to mount when that command is issued. Any ideas?  The CDROMs and LS120 mount just fine. If I switch the hdc4 to the same as the cdrom settings still no go.

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
none                    /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/hdc3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom1             /mnt/cdrom1             udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hda                /mnt/ls120                 auto    auto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/hde1               /mnt/storage            vfat    auto,owner,rw 0 0
/dev/hdc4               /mnt/windoz            vfat    auto,owner,gid=900,umask=022,rw 0 0
/dev/hdd1               /mnt/stuff            vfat    auto,owner,rw 0 0
huey:/var/www            /mnt/www            nfs      rw 0 0
zion:/data            /data                  nfs      rw 0 0
> .. gid=900,umask=022
this is useless, somehow
you set a gid, but the group only has read and execute permission.

Why did you not use uid= as suggested?


BTW what are the options:
     owner
     kudzu
gid is the group that everyone is a part of. what should the umask be???

owner doesn't work, no one can mount any of these except for root.. Kudzu removes the listings from the fstab file after a restart.

Here's the other problem- there is no good explaination of what all of the fields in this fstab file do. The man file is useless.
man mount
# there is nothing better ;-)
As you may have guessed I'm new at this. I'm trying desperatly to learn this and nothing said here makes sense as of yet. the man file for mount doesn't adequately explain the auto, owner, and other options for the fstab file. as a result I have no idea why mount -all doesn't mount the items in the fstab file (when done as root), nor do I understand why some users have ro and others have rw on the same local vfat partition.

all I want to do is have all the permissions on the vfat folders be the same for everyone- in essense no restrictions. Nothing has worked yet.

I'm working of a fresh RH9 install with all updates available as of this writing.

No one has expained the umask idea either- ahoffmann- I appriciate your help, but you've not answered most of my questions! what should the umask be? why does kudzu remove listings from the fstab file??? why can't root mount all listed fstab entries when the mount -a command is given??? I can't change the permissions on the /mnt/windoz folder for example to 777. It acts like it does, but a quick ls -l shows it's still d---------.

any here here would be appreciated!!!
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ahoffmann
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I don't see a reason for a delete
Sounds like the questioner *did not* follow the suggestions, unfortunatelly.
I did follow all suggestions and none of them worked the same problem existed.  User A save a file to the shared location and User B has no access to them, no matter what the mount options are.

You suggestions generated more questions which went un answered. I will not award points when the issue was not resolved. We have since discontinued this method as we could not find a workable solution.
disagree,
we gave workable solutions, but when tested new questions came which also have been answered.
Just re-read all comments (as already suggested), and follow the instructions and/or answer the experts questions.
Experts do not resolve problems by guessing, usually. If the questioner does /will not participate in helping to find a solution, there is no reason to refund points.
digitalwav, this is no offence, but the result of the comments/suggestions/questions in this thread.
Please be more cooperative in future questions.