FAT32 partition mount--only root has access

[ursusarctos]

Hello all--

Just finished (?) installing Gentoo on slick new Athlon 64. While I don't plan on going back to windows, I still have loads of nifty mp3s and movies on an old windows partition. I've set this partition to be mounted as /mnt/evil under vfat filesystem.

The problem is, it seems that only root can write to/access this mounted partition. Others can read it, but not access/execute it, which makes it useless. I've tried chmod to add read and write access for all to the /mnt/evil mountpoint. This only works when the partition is unmounted.

What do I need to do to so that all users can access the mounted partition?

(This may be moot in a while, as this is something of a test install. Once I figure out how I want everything set up, I'll back up the mp3s and repartition the whole hard drive. (10 good GB wasted on windows code). But in the meantime, it would be nice to listen to music.)

[Dinini]

what's your fstab entry for the partition?

something like:

/dev/hda2 /mnt/evil vfat defaults,user,umask=0022 0 0

(adjust according to need) should allow user read/write. See the man page for more info.

As far as i know, fat32 doesn't store the permission entries, so you need to use the umask to set them up. umask is basically the reverse of your normal (chmod) permission settings so:

7=[no access]
6=x
5=w
4=wx
3=r
2=rx
1=rw
0=rwx

and the first digit is always 0 (to show octal masking), the second for user, 3rd for group, 4th for others.

written from memory so please verify from the manpage rather than copying verbatim.

[DarrenM]

I'm not sure I like that umask idea. IMO, a better approach would be to use the uid=xxx and gid=xxx options to set an appropriate owner and group of the mounted filesystem.

Check "man mount" for more details.