FAT32 issue

[Duncan Lithgow]

On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 16:38 -0800, John Ughrin wrote:
> I've got a FAT32 partition set up to share between
> Ubuntu and WinXP. I've tried  changing fstab, which
> put it on my desktop. However, I can't seem to get
> permission to write or read anything in the drive. As
> root, I appear to be able to create directories, but
> then I can't change their permissions. When I get
> feedback from chmod or chown, I get stuff like this:
> 
> root at ubuntu:/home/john # chown john
> /datashare/Johnfiles
> chown: changing ownership of `/datashare/Johnfiles':
> Operation not permitted
> 
> Also, when I open the datashare drive on the GNOME
> desktop I only see little rectangles with a green
> footprint in them.
> 
> A little experimenting reveals that I _can_ do all
> these things on the linux partition. 
> 
> I'm a linux newbie so if you need more info, you might
> need to tell me how to get it. Thanks in advance.
fat32 - or vfat as linux calls it, has some different permission
problems - it doesn't work quite like other drives. I'm no expert but
this works for me:

The name of the drive which is fat 32: /dev/hda5
The folder to mount it to (don't forget to make this
folder): /mnt/SharedFiles
The filesystem: vfat
options: auto(mount always),defaults,gid=600(the id of the group who
owns it),dmask=2(the permissions for the directory),fmask=113(the
permissions for the files) 0 0

So the line should look like an altered version of:

/dev/hda5		/mnt/SharedFiles	vfat	auto,defaults,gid=600,dmask=2,fmask=113
0 0

Duncan