Since FAT has no permissions mechanism of its own, the linux kernel enforces permissions based on the mount options. Usually when a FAT filesystem is mounted it will be mounted with a particular UMASK. This means that all permissions are enabled for every file created except those permissions specified in the UMASK. I think you can't even change permissions with chmod. This is just a limitation of the FAT filesystem. As others have mentioned ext2/ext3 is an option where permissions are important. These more advanced filesystems also support features like symlinks and user & group ownership. However the notion of ownership causes its own problems with usb flash drives, because if you use it to share files between computers, if your user IDs and group IDs are not the same on all computers, then you will have trouble reading/writing/deleting files. You may find yourself having to use root/sudo to set permissions & ownership when moving files back and forth. That can be a hassle. To my knowledge there aren't any mount options for ext2 that will flatten permissions to, say 777 for directories & 666 for files. <div>On 12/7/05, Ashwani Jain <<a href="mailto:ashwani@gisil.com">ashwani@gisil.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Hi I am using Ubuntu 5.10. When I plug in my USB Stick (Kingston 256MB), it gets mounted and now we can cut/copy/paste files on and off it. But the problem is that when I copy file form my pc to usb stick it changes it file permission. e.g. I copied a file from my desktop file permission for that was 644 and after it got copied to usb stick, on usb stick its file permission were 700, when I copied a file carrying file permission 777 after it got copied to usb stick its file permission changed to 744. Why so happens, kindly help. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td> Thanks & regards Ashwani Jain Systems Administrator GISIL, 10th Floor, Tower A Signature Towers South City 1 Gurgaon 121001 Haryana, INDIA Handphone: +91-9811084143 Fax : +91-124-5071700 Office: +91-124-5071600 ext 202 WEB: <a href="http://www.gisil.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://www.gisil.com</a> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> -- ubuntu-users mailing list <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users" target="_blank"> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users</a> </blockquote></div> -- If you reply to a message I posted to a mailing list, and you want me to see your reply, be sure to put my address in the 'To:', or I might not see the message.