<html><head><style type="text/css"></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Andrew Thank you for such an in depth and informative response. Changing the  uid= to blank did the trick in the end. Stu <div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ---- From: Andrew Oakley <andrew@aoakley.com> To: British Ubuntu Talk <ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com> Sent: Friday, 8 February, 2008 11:25:18 AM Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] USB Hard Drive Group Permissions Stuart Bird wrote: > The first way is to use: gksudo nautilus to access and edit files as > root. The second way is to add myself to the root group which then > allows me full control from my normal users account. > > Can anyone advise if these are viable (ie safe) long term solutions or > should I keep searching for a better way. Are you logged into Gnome when you attach the external drive, or do you have it plugged in when you switch on? If you have it plugged in when you switch on, it won't know who to mount it as, and may default to root; you may need to write an /etc/fstab rule for the external drive with uid=youruserid and/or gid=yourgroup . For example, my username is aoakley, so to mount a FAT external drive at boot time, I might write an /etc/fstab rule like: /dev/sdb /media/mymountpoint vfat rw,uid=aoakley 0 0 Beware that not all external hard drives are VFAT! Some may be NTFS or somesuch. Alternatively I might use umask to make it read/writable to everyone within a particular group: /dev/sdb /media/mymountpoint vfat rw,umask=007 0 0 ...which would make it read/writable to everyone in the root group, or: /dev/sdb /media/mymountpoint vfat rw,gid=aoakley,umask=007 0 0 ...which would make it read/writable to everyone in aoakley's group, or: /dev/sdb /media/mymountpoint vfat rw,umask=000 0 0 ...which would make it owned by root but read/writable to everyone, even guest users (INSECURE!). (Stop reading now if you attach the drive before the machine is switched on, or if you always leave the drive plugged in. The following only apply if you attach the drive AFTER you log in to Gnome.) Newly plugged-in USB drives AFTER you have logged in to Gnome should automatically be mounted as the logged-in user (eg. aoakley for myself) and root as the group. Have you got more than one user logged into Gnome perhaps? This might cause confusion. For example, I log in to Gnome and insert a 1GB USB key, so I get: $ cat /etc/mtab ... /dev/sdb /media/AO\0401GB vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,utf8,umask=077,usefree 0 0 $ ls -l /media total 28 drwx------ 10 aoakley root 16384 1970-01-01 01:00 AO 1GB ... The last line shows that the user is aoakley (my local logged-in user) and the group is root. If you aren't getting this, then either you're not using Gnome Automount, or something is wrong with Gnome Automount. Have you written an /etc/fstab entry which is overruling Gnome Automount? If so, try commenting it out. Is automount running? Check for gnome-v* processes, you should see two; gnome-volume-manager and gnome-vfs-daemon . If not, something is wrong with your gnome start-up sequence (too complex to discuss here). $ sudo ps -e | grep gnome-v 5600 ?        00:00:00 gnome-volume-ma 5630 ?        00:00:00 gnome-vfs-daemo Check your Gnome Automount preferences in System - Preferences - Removable Drives And Media - Removable Storage - Mount Removable Drives When Hot Plugged TICKED - Mount Removable Media When Inserted TICKED. Check your Gnome Automount configuration in (Alt-F2) - gconf-editor - System - Storage . Check that there is NOT some special rule for your hard drive. Then check under Default Options - (Your storage type) and make sure that the uid= config is either not present, or blank. For instance, my gconf-editor - System - Storage - Default Options - VFat - mount_options shows: [shortname=mixed,uid=,utf8,umask=077,exec,usefree] The important bit there is "uid=" (uid equals empty) which defaults to the currently logged-in user in Gnome. -- Andrew Oakley -- <a ymailto="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com" href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a> <a href="https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/" target="_blank">https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/</a> </div> </div></div> <hr size=1> Yahoo! Answers - Get better answers from someone who knows. <a href="http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTEydmViNG02BF9TAzIxMTQ3MTcxOTAEc2VjA21haWwEc2xrA3RhZ2xpbmU">Try it now</a>.</body></html>