Making CompactFlash user-owned partition/directory

[Charlie Zender <zender@uci.edu>]

Hi,

I am running a fully update Debian Sid linux with 2.6.7 kernel.
I am mounting a CompactFlash partition through my PCMCIA adaptor as

root@elnino:~# mount -t vfat -o umask=022 /dev/hde1 /cf

The umask allows users to read and write to the /cf partition.
However, I cannot figure out how to create user-owned directories.

root@elnino:/cf# ls -ld /cf
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 16384 Oct 31 11:09 /cf
root@elnino:/cf# mkdir /cf/zender
root@elnino:/cf# chown zender zender
chown: changing ownership of `zender': Operation not permitted
root@elnino:/cf# ls -ld zender
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 16384 Oct 31 11:09 zender

zender is a valid user account on this machine,
why can't root changed ownership of zender directory to zender?

Is there a mount option that I need to set?
While I'm at it, how do I enable a user to mount and own the
whole /cf partition?

Any help appreciated,
Charlie
--
Charlie Zender, surname@uci.edu, (949) 824-2987, Department of Earth
System Science, University of California, Irvine CA 92697-3100