Ubuntu

Make second physical internal hard drive available to all users

Asked by nicenick on 2007-02-12

I have Ubuntu 6.0.6 installed and operating on my primary 40 GB HDA internal hard drive. Install set up the all the default partitions etc. Everything works fine.

Now the problem: I needed more space, so I added a second physical HDB Western Digital 80 GB internal hard drive. Partitioned and formatted as follows:
60 GB partition 1 EX3
20 GB partiton 2 FAT32

I have it mounted in /media/wd80g directory, but all permissions are read only and 'root owner'.

Here is the thing, this drive will be 'data storage only' I want all users (the kids/wife/guests) to have full permissions to this drive at boot, I don't care if they read/steal/kill each others data on this drive, it belongs to them (all users, present and future).

Here are the lines I added to fstab:
/dev/hdb1 /media/wd80g ext3 rw,users,auto 1 1
/dev/hdb2 /media/wd80g FAT32 rw,users,auto 1 1
but still all users are read only.

Is there a simple fstab fix to give all users read and write (full) permissions to this drive all the time?

Change ownership from root to all users?

Nice Nick

Question information

Language:: English Edit question

Status:: Solved

For:: Ubuntu Edit question

Assignee:: No assignee Edit question

Solved by:: Ralph Janke

Solved:: 2007-02-12

Last query:: 2007-02-12

Last reply:: 2007-02-12

Link existing bug

Revision history for this message

Ralph Janke (txwikinger) said on 2007-02-12:

You can not mount to drives to the same mount point. Therefore hdb1 and hdb2 should go to different place i.e. /media/w80g1 and /media/w80g2.

FAT does not have user permissions, therefore you can mount it only for a user alltogether. In the fstab entry you can add uid=1000,gid=100 (put your specific ids in it) to mount it with ownership to that particular user/group. With umask=777 everybody can do everything on the drive.

See also here for more information.

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mount_Windows_partitions_(DOS,_FAT,NTFS)

On your ext3 partition, you can set the user permissions for every directory/file inside they way you need it.

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Maurizio Moriconi (bugman) said on 2007-02-12:

According to :

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticallyMountPartitions

You must insert this options:

user,auto,fmask=0111,dmask=0000.

Here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131

there is an explanation of the options.

Revision history for this message

Ralph Janke (txwikinger) said on 2007-02-12:

Sorry the link above got somehow altered .. here is the right one

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mount_Windows_partitions_(DOS,_FAT,NTFS)

Revision history for this message

nicenick (dahudie720-coa) said on 2007-02-12:

Txwikinger, neither link works, say the page doesn't exist.
I created two mount points wd80g1 and wd80g2 and alter fstab as:
/dev/hdb1 /media/wd80g1 ext3 rw,users,auto 1 1
/dev/hdb2 /media/wd80g2 FAT32 rw,users,auto 1 1

Maurizio Mopiconi, When I add the lines as follows:
Here are the lines I added to fstab:
/dev/hdb1 /media/wd80g1 ext3 rw,users,auto,fmask=0111,dmask=0000 1 1
/dev/hdb2 /media/wd80g2 FAT32 rw,users,auto 1 1

I restarted the computer and drive HDB did not even mount.
I removed fmask/dmask, rebooted and the drive mounted again.