On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:02:49 -0800 (PST)
Rich Shepard <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 
> > I never had this problem with Ubuntu or when I was trying Debian
> > testing. But when I installed Fedora 12, and now with OpenSuse 11.2,
> > when I plug in my USB drive Nautilus won't let me write to it because
> > it is read-only.
> 
>    Sometimes I get that when the entry in /etc/fstab does not include the
> 'users' option.
> > /dev/sdb1 on /media/USB Drive type vfat
> > (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit,uid=1000,gid=100,shortname=lower,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)
> 
>    I don't know why the options are in parentheses or why there are so many.
> On my system /etc/fstab has two mountable USB devices:
> 
> /dev/sda1        /mnt/thumb       vfat        noauto,users    0 0
> /dev/sda         /mnt/meizu       vfat        noauto,users    0 0
> 
> and both work for me as a user.
> 
>    Suggest that you change /etc/fstab to have only the two options I use and
> see if there's a difference.

Thanks for the suggestion. Things have changed.

Due to the overwhelming bugs in Gnome 2.8.0 I have wiped out OpenSuse 11.2 and 
installed OpenSuse 11.1. Hopefully (knocking on wood, throwing salt over 
shoulder, crossing fingers) things will be much better.

Before I wiped out 11.2 I needed to copy a couple of folders to something, one 
being my Mail folder and the other being the live CD of 11.1 that I had 
downloaded. The latter could easily be reproduced, but I really needed the Mail 
folder. I have two other USB sticks, an ancient 512 MB and an almost as old 1 
GB. Both mounted as RW. I got the mail folder on one, and the 11.1 ISO on the 
other, although I had to delete the PLUG flyers to make room. They're on my old 
hard disk and I have other backups, so not to worry.

Now that I am running with 11.1 I stuck in the offending USB drive. Nautilus 
popped up a window displaying the contents, but every single item had a padlock 
on it. From the command line "ls -la" shows that every single item on the drive 
is owned by jjj (that's me!) of the group root (not me!). 

Somehow, while using this drive and installing various different distros the 
ownership has gotten messed up. And it is still not mounted read/write. Even as 
root I cannot copy a file to it. Yet the mount command still says it is (rw). 

The thing is that I use this drive to transfer things to professors and other 
students at PSU. I can probably fix /etc/fstab, but what happens when I hand it 
to someone else with a Windows or Mac computer?

Maybe I should just copy everything off of it to a DVD and reformat it as vfat.

Sorry for the lack of linewrap. Sylpheed won't install on OpenSuse 11.1 and I 
had to install Claws Mail instead. I can't find the button for Linewrap.
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

Reply via email to