I have some files on an external flash drive mounted at /media/usbdisk. All the files are owned by the root. I logged onto /media/usbdisk did "su" and then chown [user] *, only to get a notice for each file that the change of ownership is not allowed. How do I change ownership of the files on that external drive? -- Best regards, Dennis J. Tuchler University City, Missouri 63130 USA Whatever is not forbidden is permitted -- Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller -- Wallensteins Lager
On Thursday 18 May 2006 10:57 am, Dennis J. Tuchler wrote:
I have some files on an external flash drive mounted at /media/usbdisk. All the files are owned by the root. I logged onto /media/usbdisk did "su" and then chown [user] *, only to get a notice for each file that the change of ownership is not allowed.
How do I change ownership of the files on that external drive?
Dennis
Sounds to me that you went one level too deep and are being blocked at the parent directory. Either by fstab or /media/usbdisk settings. Stan
On 5/18/06, Dennis J. Tuchler
I have some files on an external flash drive mounted at /media/usbdisk. All the files are owned by the root. I logged onto /media/usbdisk did "su" and then chown [user] *, only to get a notice for each file that the change of ownership is not allowed.
How do I change ownership of the files on that external drive?
Hi Dennis, it's hard to say, that's exactly what I'd do :) Some questions/suggestions: 1. is the filesystem mounted read-only? (if you didn't mount it manualy you can check that by looking at /etc/fstab) 2. is there any message in /var/log/messages? (as root: tail /var/log/messages) Thanks, -mw
Mello wrote:
On 5/18/06, Dennis J. Tuchler
wrote: I have some files on an external flash drive mounted at /media/usbdisk. All the files are owned by the root. I logged onto /media/usbdisk did "su" and then chown [user] *, only to get a notice for each file that the change of ownership is not allowed.
How do I change ownership of the files on that external drive?
Hi Dennis, it's hard to say, that's exactly what I'd do :)
Some questions/suggestions: 1. is the filesystem mounted read-only? (if you didn't mount it manualy you can check that by looking at /etc/fstab) The fstab entry reads: usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
The directory entry for /media/usbdisk is: drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16384 1969-12-31 18:00 usbdisk I cannot copy anything to the drive. Odd. It must be hardware related as I can load files onto it when it is attached to the usb port of my other (SuSE) computer. I just pulled the external drive and reattached it to a different usb port. It is now fully accessible and I am the owner of each file. What's going on? -- Best regards, Dennis J. Tuchler University City, Missouri 63130 USA Whatever is not forbidden is permitted -- Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller -- Wallensteins Lager
On Thu, 18 May, 2006 at 10:57:48 -0500, Dennis J. Tuchler wrote:
I have some files on an external flash drive mounted at /media/usbdisk. All the files are owned by the root. I logged onto /media/usbdisk did "su" and then chown [user] *, only to get a notice for each file that the change of ownership is not allowed.
Sounds like an msdos filesystem on the disk, in which case; whoever mounts the disk 'owns' the files on it.
How do I change ownership of the files on that external drive?
You don't. What you *can* do is set things up so your user-account is allowed to mount the disk. After that "all your files are belong to you". The slightly longer explanation is that there are no such things as file-ownership, read/write/execute -rights in a FAT filesystem, so instead what's shown reflects who mounted the filesystem. HTH /Jon -- YMMV
participants (4)
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Dennis J. Tuchler
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Jon Clausen
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Mello
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S Glasoe