Strage problem in vfat mounting..!

[lakshman]

I am able to mount hda partitions properly with read-write permission for user lakshman, when same configuration is used for hdb partitions (both vfat partitions) it is mounting them with root as owner and I am unable to get write permissions.

The details are as follows,

I had added following lines fstab to mount my vfat file systems,

/dev/hda11 /softwares vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,auto,exec 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /songs vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,auto,exec 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /videos vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,auto,exec 0 0

I am able to mount the drive on hda11 correctly with permissions for user
lakshman. But when it comes to hdb5 and hdb6 it mounts file systems with root
as owner.

Following are permission of mount points
Before mounting,
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 16 08:55 softwares
drwxr-xr-x 2 lakshman lakshman 4096 Feb 16 08:55 songs
drwxr-xr-x 2 lakshman lakshman 4096 Feb 16 08:55 videos

After mounting,
drwxr-xr-x 20 lakshman lakshman 8192 Jan 1 1970 softwares
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 8192 Jan 1 1970 songs
drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 8192 Apr 6 19:29 videos

observe that mount point of softwares is owned by root and after mounting it is
owned by lakshman. Even when all permissions, including mount point, are given
it didn't worked for hdb5 and hdb6.

I had also tried this (of course, I doesn't like to do it this way)
/dev/hdb6 /songs vfat user,auto,exec,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /videos vfat user,auto,exec,umask=000 0 0
Then tried this,
/dev/hdb6 /songs vfat user,rw,auto,exec,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /videos vfat user,rw,auto,exec,umask=000 0 0

Nothing worked :-(.

Thanks in advance,
-Lakshman.

PS: I am using Fedora Core 3.

[tulakin]

check the groups user lakshman belongs to by command:
groups lakshman

maybe lakshman needs to belong to the root group...

[tulakin]

Aslo, try placing the user option for hdb in the fstab - like this:

/dev/hdb6 /songs vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,auto,exec,user 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /videos vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,auto,exec,user 0 0

The user option should allow a user out side of root to mount...though,
I see you are trying to get just the user lakshman to solely mount
the drive....this may work as a work around until you get the UID to
work properly...

[lakshman]

Hi,
Thanks for an immediate reply. Adding lakshman to root group may not be useful for write permissions because group have only read-execute permissions for hdb partitions.

After mounting,
drwxr-xr-x 20 lakshman lakshman 8192 Jan 1 1970 softwares
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 8192 Jan 1 1970 songs
drwxr-xr-x 26 root root 8192 Apr 6 19:29 videos

I tried your 2nd suggestion but it also didn't worked for me.

When I mount hda11 as follows
/dev/hda11 /softwares vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,auto,exec 0 0
It mounted the partition with lakshman as owner and given all permission for user lakshman.

But when I tried to apply same options on hdb5, hdb6 the strangely it mounted both with root as owner and user lakshman is just able to read.

I desparately need to sort this out. Thanks in advance.

[tulakin]

okay...my last try on the fstab try this:

/dev/hdb6 /songs vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,rw,suid,dev,exec,async 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /videos vfat uid=lakshman,gid=lakshman,rw,suid,dev,exec,async 0 0

-Tulakin

[tulakin]

You can also try removing the uid=lakshman,gid-=lakshman and run fstab as follows:

/dev/hdb6 /songs vfat rw,suid,dev,exec,async 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /videos vfat rw,suid,dev,exec,async 0 0

-Tulakin

[lakshman]

I tried both. But problem persists.

-Lakshman.

[tulakin]

I just finish reading the man pages...it mentions a fstab-sync...think this is wiping out your modifications to fstab?

[lakshman]

No more changes available for me to try now.
Thanks a lot for spending your time.

-Lakshman.

[lakshman]

That's the problem with kernel-2.6.10-1.770_FC3. I had upgraded my kernel to kernel-2.6.11-1.14_FC3 and solved the problem.

-Lakshman.