Arch Linux

phrenchax

Member

From: Glens Falls, NY, USA

Registered: 2010-11-28

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

I feel like I am over looking something silly:
I have an external hard drive.  If I format it as fat32, I can mount it without issue in KDE and I have full rw access.
However, if I format it as ext2, I can still mount it but I do not have write access as a regular user.  I can write to it as root.
Is this normal behavior, or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks!

Last edited by phrenchax (2012-03-16 00:38:41)

dodo3773

Member

Registered: 2011-03-17

Posts: 818

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

Can't you just chown the partition / directory?

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

Fat32 doesn't have file permissions or file ownership, modern file systems incorporate these.  If you wish to mount a partition as a normal user, you should read and use the udev article in the wiki.  It's also possible to set permissions for a specific external drive using fstab.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,797

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

How are you mounting it?  Have you created an /etc/fstab entry for it? Are you counting on udev ?

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phrenchax

Member

From: Glens Falls, NY, USA

Registered: 2010-11-28

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

Thanks for the replies guys!

dodo3773: I can use chown, but I would have to do this every time I mount it.

thisoldman: I could use fstab, but what I want is to have any usb drive I plug in rw accessible to normal users, even if formatted as ext.  I will dig into udev and see what I can find out...

ewaller: I am mounting it by clicking on it in Dolphin (KDE).

I guess what I probably want is to make sure the users group is granted rw access.

Mr.Elendig

#archlinux@freenode channel op

From: The intertubes

Registered: 2004-11-07

Posts: 4,092

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

just chmod the content of the stick to 0777

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dodo3773

Member

Registered: 2011-03-17

Posts: 818

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

I am mounting it by clicking on it in Dolphin (KDE).

I guess what I probably want is to make sure the users group is granted rw access.

Is your user in the storage group? Also, have you tried an alternate file manager to make sure that isn't the problem? You are running consolekit, dbus, etc.. right?

phrenchax

Member

From: Glens Falls, NY, USA

Registered: 2010-11-28

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] USB drive formatted as ext2 mounts as root only

The more I think about it, the more I am coming to realize that this is normal behavior.  I guess every flash drive I have used in the past has been fat16/32, for which permissions don't matter: just plug it in and anybody can write to it.  I guess I was expecting the same behavior with a ext2 formatted usb drive, but obviously that can't be so.

I have created a directory on my usb drive as root, changed ownership to my user name, and I can now plug in and write to that folder as regular user without any problem.

Marking this one as solved; thanks all for your thoughts!