Re: chmod on vfat

[servis@purdue.edu]

*- On 12 Feb, David Webster wrote about "chmod on vfat"
> Only root can write to a vfat partition.  I suppose because vfat
> contains no extended attributes for security you cannot simply chmod on
> a file/directory to allow someone other than root to write to it.  Any
> work arounds to allow someone other than root to write to a vfat
> partition?
> 

This is what I have done.  I created a group called dos with gid of
35(this could be whatever you want, see man for adduser). Then I just
added users of the local machine to that group(see man for adduser).
Then mount the drives with gid=35 and umask=007.  Below are the bits of
my fstab for my three vfat partitions.

/dev/hda1             /bri/c    vfat    rw,quiet,unhide,gid=35,umask=007,user
/dev/hda6             /bri/d    vfat    rw,quiet,unhide,gid=35,umask=007,user
/dev/hdc5             /bri/e    vfat    rw,quiet,unhide,gid=35,umask=007,user

See man for mount and fstab.

If you don't use the quiet option(see man for mount)you get messages
like 'Operation not supported:......' because as you said above vfat
does not have extended attributes.  

Works for me,
-- 
Brian 
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Mechanical Engineering                                bservis@usa.net
Purdue University                   http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis
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