On Sat, 15 Mar 2014 20:29:41 -0600 Paul E Condon <pecon...@mesanetworks.net> wrote:
> I have a 4GB thumb drive that I have formatted with two > partitions: > > #1 is 100MB with vfat format > #2 is all the rest with ext4 format > > I want to set permissions so that I can read/write on partition #1 on > both my Squeeze computer and on a Windows box, both as a > non-privileged user. The last time that I ever had any real contact > with Windows was in the early days of Windows95, back in the last > century. I know that back then there was not much that one could do to > make this data interchange 'user friendly'. Has anything changed? Or > do I still have to use root to write on a vfat partition? I wouldn't > even bother to ask except I read in man-pages, for things related to > mount, that a distinction is sometimes made among 'user', 'users', > and the 'owner of the device'. So, I think maybe some software has > been written to clean up this mess, but probably not. So, has there > been improvement? > > On the other hand, I have no problem with partition #2. It behaves as > it should under Squeeze, and Windows does not give any hint that it > knows of its existence, Which is OK for me. > > But I would like to have a better way to move data on and off the vfat > partition, if such a way actually exists. > 'Better'? The 'best' way I have found is to mount USB drives on Linux by UUID and to explicitly set user and group for the mount point. This is partly because I find usbmount mounts some drives as both the complete drive and its partitions, even though fdisk is happy that there is a proper partition structure present. In these cases, I explicitly tell usbmount to mount the entire drive on 'none' before mounting the partitions, and this seems to prevent unpleasantness. Yes, it's a pain, having to create fstab entries for particular drives, but having done so, it works. Explicit fstab entries also seems to be the only way to ensure that a given drive mounts at a particular point, for example if you keep ssh or VPN keys on a drive and don't want to edit the configuration file every time you want to connect. Oh, and if Windows tells you the drive has a problem, and offers to fix it, don't let it. Win8 seems particularly prone to this. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140316090717.513a1...@jretrading.com
