Changing ownership on floppy

[Eric Weir]

Thanks for the explanation, David. I've posted the fstab entry in my 
response to Kevin. I'm not sure you mean by "mount it as root but pass 
'-o user=YOURUSERNAME' as an option to mount," i.e., what the command 
and syntax are. [I'll be checking linuxcommand.com while waiting for a 
response.]

Yes, I understand that there are reasons why things are the way they 
are, and that, as you say, often, maybe usually, the reasons are good 
ones. Still -- keep in mind here that I'm only a mildly sophisticated 
user, not a techie, let alone a software engineer -- I wonder if there 
isn't a lot of stuff that's been legacied from UNIX from when it was 
strictly a mainframe multiuser operating system that is problematic in 
the PC environment, especially the home user PC environment. As I say, I 
just wonder. I definitely don't know.

Sincerely,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Weir
Decatur, GA  USA
eeweir at bellsouth.net

David Tomaschik wrote:
> Sudo does give you root privileges.  Most likely, in this case, even
> root can't change the ownership on the files on the floppy drive.  And
> here's why:  they're probably formatted as FAT-12 or some other FAT
> variant.  FAT does not support POSIX ownership of files, so for POSIX
> purposes, it inherits a default owner for the entire filesystem.  By
> default, that owner is root.  If you have an entry in fstab for your
> floppy drive with the 'users' option, any user should be able to mount
> it.  If you don't, mount it as root but pass '-o user=YOURUSERNAME' as
> an option to mount.  This causes the drive to be mounted as the user you
> specify.
>
> I know some things in Linux seem different -- frustrating, even.  But
> they're generally done in a way for a reason (even if it's a historical
> reason) and in many cases, the reason is good.  :)
>
> --David
>
>
> Eric Weir wrote:
>   
>> I have some old files on floppies that I want to copy to my hard disk. I 
>> am able to mount the drive only with sudo on the terminal. After it's 
>> mounted, ownership is root. When I try to change that by sudoing chown, 
>> I am told "Operation not permitted." I thought sudo gave you root 
>> privileges. Is there a way around this Catch-22?
>>
>> At the risk of ticking off people who otherwise might be inclined to 
>> help, I have to say that this is one of the things that's really 
>> irritating about Linux, and that is driving me away from it. I have been 
>> patiently -- well, honestly, sometimes pretty *impatiently* -- trying to 
>> understand it, assuming that eventually things that used to mystify 
>> would become intuitive.
>>
>> I guess some have. Probably many have, given where I started. But over a 
>> year into this and I can't even use my own frigging floppy drive without 
>> asking for help? [I checked a couple books I have. I went to 
>> linuxcommand.org for help with the commands. I posted on another forum. 
>> Two hours have passed. Now I'm trying you guys.] I'm *tired* of this.
>>
>> If you can forgive the rant, I'd appreciate any suggestions.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Eric Weir
>> Decatur, GA  USA
>> eeweir at bellsouth.net
>>
>>   
>>     
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