[ale] Permission hell question

[Dow Hurst]

I was reading thru all the posts on this and you have basically a couple of 
problems working together.

Vfat doesn't have permissions like normal Linux filesystems.  So you can't 
change the permissions on files from the vfat default of anyone reading and 
writing any files.

Your device file permissions were initially set so only root could access the 
device.  That way your normal user id wouldn't be able to write to the drive.

So, if you have to use the zip as a transfer between Win/DOS and Linux, then 
you should keep the filesystem as is, and just leave your device file that 
represents the zip drive as writeable for root.  Su to root to mount, transfer 
files, and unmount the zip.

If you move to the new 2.6 kernel then all the mount and umount stuff goes 
away for removeable devices.  Plus, with permissions on the devices set 
correctly by the kernel for removeable devices you can work as a user.  I need 
to read up on that last statement but SuSE 9.1 was a dream for the use of CD's 
and floppies when I was trying it out.

Using mtools is a nice idea since it is designed to work with vfat.  The unix 
cp -p command won't work like you'd expect since you don't have ownership or 
permissions per se under vfat.  I believe the kernel just calls all the files 
and directories as owned by root unless you have it mounted as nobody.

The underlying mount point permissions are very important to match up with 
what your filesystem has that will be mounted.  You can't see those 
permissions on the mount point unless the filesystem isn't mounted yet on that 
mount point.  This bites people using NFS, such as me, when you have the mount 
point with 0700 permissions but expect to have 0755 on the mounted filesystem. 
  The mounted filesystem's permissions hide and overlay the underlying mount 
point's permissions when mounted so you'd have to unmount to check and see 
what the values were.
Dow


Sean Kilpatrick wrote:
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> Have a zip drive.
> It is mounted at /misc/zip/
> On it is a directory: /Scripts/wake/ and I want to
> change the ownership-Group of all the files in that
> directory. Got the command right and was told, for
> each file, "Operation not permitted."
> So I tried to back out a bit and change the permissions
> on the zip platter itself.
> the directory is currently listed this way:
> 
> drwxrwxr-x    6 nobody   users       16384 Dec 31  1969 zip
> 
> so I tried while in the /misc directory (as root):
> chown kilpatms.users * 
> and once again was told "Operation not permitted."
> 
> What's happening is that when I copy files (that have the
> correct permissions) from the hard drive to the zip platter
> [giving me a backup] the perms are changed from kilpatms-kilpatms
> to nobody-users.  I need to have the perms remain unchanged.
> 
> How can I fix this?
> 
> Sean
> 
> 
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> 
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> 

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Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
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