On 02/01/14 23:02, Chris Stankevitz wrote: > Hello, > > Please consider a USB "stick" that is unformatted but is to be used by > multiple people/machines. Ideally your instructions will work for all > people/os/WM, but if necessary please assume that everyone is running > gnome under linux
Well, if it ideally should work across multiple operating systems, you're probably stuck with FAT32 or similar due to Windows. > 1. How should I prepare this device so that it can be plugged into any > machine and will be writable by anyone? I suspect the answer will > involve words like fdisk, mkfs.xxx, mkdir/mount, chmod/chown. I'm > most interested in the chmod/chown part. If you go with FAT, there's no notion of ownership (I believe) so it's not a problem. If you don't, I still don't think chmod/chown matters as long as the user has the permissions to write to the stick when mounted on their own machine. I might be wrong though! > 2. How can I prepare the device so that files/directories added by > people in the future will continue to be writable by anyone? Likewise, I think they'll be able to as long as they have the permission to write to the mounted stick _on their own machine_. > 3. How can I ensure that all files will appear to have the same owner; > or, if this is not important, can you explain why it should not be a > problem. I think it's not a problem, at least not with FAT. > And of course if you can refer me to a document that explains this I'm > happy to read it. > > Thank you, > > Chris > I'm not an expert but hopefully this helps to at least steer you in the right direction. I used multiple USB sticks across multiple machines across multiple systems in the past and I never had any ownership concerns that you do. The only issues were if one of the systems couldn't read the file format used. -- Mateusz K.
