Why is mounting a USB disk in a usable manner so difficult?

[Nils Kassube]

Johnny Rosenberg wrote:
> 2013/12/16 J <dreadpiratejeff at gmail.com>
> > NOW, Saucy chooses to mount the drive in my users mount point,
> > /media/username/drivename
> > WITH ROOT ownership.
> > /dev/sdb1 on /media/bladernr/Alexandria type ext4
> > (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2)
> > 
> > bladernr at klaatu:/media/bladernr$ ll
> > total 4
> > drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 16 13:21 Alexandria
> > 
> > Which makes it impossible toe ven create files on my USB HDD now.
> > 
> > so two questions:
> > 
> > How the heck do I fix this so that my external hard drives are
> > mounted in a way that I can actually use them?
> > 
> > Why do we make it so bloody difficult to actually plug a drive in
> > and use it?
> 
> I don't know why that happens, it doesn't happen to me. I just plug
> mine in and it's ready to be used.
> Anyway, can't you just change the owner with ”sudo chown
> bladernr:bladernr /media/bladernr/Alexandria”?

Indeed that should work. And as it is a disk meant to be used for data 
only, it is probably useful to make the entire space available. Normally 
5% of the space is reserved for root. Use the command

sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb1

if the disk is still at "/dev/sdb". Otherwise replace the "/dev/sdb1" 
with the appropriate device.


Nils