Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

assimazza · 2025-06-28 08:56:56

Hello everyone,

I am installing arch linux for the first time. I have a dual boot arch/win11 and I prepared a separate ex-fat partition for the /home directories. I decided to use ex-fat so that the data can be accessible both from windows and arch.

The problem I have now is that I can't create users correctly: the user is created but the ownership of its home directory is with root and not with the user. In other words, if I give:

 useradd -m -U -G wheel,users,video,audio,storage -s /bin/bash assimazza

It correctly creates a user assimazza but it returns the following error:

 useradd: warning: chown on `/home/assimazza' failed: Operation not permitted

If I delete a user, the home folder is not removed and I have to manually delete it.

I tried to do the following two things to fix the problem, with no success:

I added the option users to fstab
I changed the /home partition type from Microsoft Basic Data to Linux Home

The outcome of my actions were:

When I create a new user, its home folder belongs to root and to the users group
The ex-fat partition is not visible from windows anymore

This is the output of ls -la /home

drwxr-xr-x  2 root users 131072 Jun 28 10:41  assimazza

Since creating users is something pretty standard, there must be something I am missing somewhere which I don't know about. I ran out of ideas, can anybody help?

My /etc/fstab (the partition I am talking about is label tchest):

 # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p3
UUID=3651b440-905a-40be-9af9-5c0f42a8e060       /               ext4            rw,relatime     0 1

# /dev/nvme0n1p5 LABEL=tchest
UUID=F9DD-DE36          /home           exfat           rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,users,gid=984,iocharset=utf8,errors=remount-ro        0 2

# /dev/nvme0n1p1
UUID=D0C5-A134          /boot           vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro   0 2

# /dev/nvme0n1p2
UUID=578db1e7-63d2-46e5-be5a-76554e4aaa8d       none            swap            defaults        0 0

graysky · 2025-06-28 09:01:17

exfat does not support linux permissions. I recommend that you keep your /home on ext4 and if you want a shared partition for just data type files, use ntfs or exfat. You can use a bind mount to your linux space or a simply symlink.

assimazza · 2025-06-28 09:22:33

Oh this defeats a little bit the purpose of the shared partition as ii wanted it to be. if I repartition it to ntfs will that work? I do remember sharing partitions between systems in the old days
I could otherwise bind mount the shared partition from the home one iand manually do everything there?

graysky · 2025-06-28 09:33:07

I believe ntfs also cannot do it.

SimonJ · 2025-06-28 09:44:07

This may help https://www.howtogeek.com/112888/3-ways … m-windows/

cryptearth · 2025-06-28 11:21:06

this sounds like an XY problem: What is the EXACT goal you want to achieve / why EXACTLY do you think sharing the /home partition is a good idea / how EXACTLY did you came up with exFAT?
also: a users HOME is a very sensitive place so it's supposed to be kept private to the user
we had a topic not so long ago with question about how to share files within /home with other users - the recommended solution: not at all but use an additional fomder outside of /home and group permissions
tldr: for most of the main directories at / linux requires a filesystem with proper posix permissions support
no FAT variant does support that - and neither does ntfs properly because windows permissions are quite different to posix so they can only be mapped

tldr: for /home you require a proper linux filesystem like ext, xfs, btrfs or zfs - none of which wibdows can read
so to exchange data either use an additional partition with like (ex)fat mounted to some folder other than /home or /home/<user> - or access an ntfs partition in a one-way fashion from linux to windows only

other EXPERIMENTAL(!) options are BtrFS and ZFS with modern filesystem drivers developed for windows - but these are ALPHA at best and very volaitile and should be used for testing only - anything beyond should be considered as "when will I lose data" instead of "if ..."

if you want to share games like steam/epic - it is possible - have a look in the wiki

assimazza · 2025-06-28 16:20:38

Hello thank you everyone for your replies

I jogged my memory and yes, back in the days I had both an home partition and a data partition formatted ntfs which I was using to share data across windows and Linux

The whole point of the common partition, in this case, was to keep user data in a single place without duplicating data anywhere. I chose exfat since fat32 is obsolete, ntfs is old and I am using a solid state drive.

I think, since arch will be the primary system I will use, I will try to reformat the partition to ext4 and let Linux be the dominant system. I will install something recommended in the link shared by SimonJ at this point, if the providers look reputable enough.

If the providers won’t tick the boxes then I will have to accept the shared data partition formatted ntfs and hoop around with bind mounts setup per single user (I guess there is no way to automate this without bash scripting?), I plan to use the laptop for development and fun so I plan to have more than one user per real person.

I can’t believe that in 2025 Microsoft hasn’t yet done right the integration with ext file systems but things seems to have moved in since the days of ext2manager which was a little flimsy

For the sake of completion, I can’t put on experimental stuff as this will host the equivalent of production stuff for personal use and it needs to be reliable

I will fire the format and keep you posted

assimazza · 2025-06-28 19:21:47

I reformat the partition as ext4 and everything went smoothly as expected.

I think I will opt for the freeware application as that enables also reading from Mac’s filesystems.

Just a note which might be unexpected for new arch users, don’t forget to regenerate fstab after a repartition otherwise you will get a dependency fail at startup and the system will refuse to boot (just following the installation guide on the partitioning and configuring was sufficient)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-06-28 08:56:56

Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#2 2025-06-28 09:01:17

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#3 2025-06-28 09:22:33

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#4 2025-06-28 09:33:07

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#5 2025-06-28 09:44:07

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#6 2025-06-28 11:21:06

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#7 2025-06-28 16:20:38

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

#8 2025-06-28 19:21:47

Re: Unable to create users correctly in separate exfat home partition

Board footer