Pardon me if this has been answered in another thread - I just couldn't find it.

I have two "vfat" partitions, hda1 and hdb1, that I'd like to be able to access under my normal user account (I created one). (Knoppix is installed on hda2.)

By default, Knoppix set them up this way in /etc/fstab (I changed "noauto" to "auto"):

/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 auto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0

(Same for hdb1.)

However, for the "ext2" partition on hdb2 (it's a Red Hat partition), fstab reads:

/dev/hdb2 /mnt/hdb2 ext2 auto,user,exec 0 0

So I thought I'd just change the lines for hda1 and hdb1 to match the line for hdb2, but when I did, the partitions were mounted, I just couldn't access them as a normal user ("permission denied"), only as root. So I changed them back to the Knoppix default, and they are now accessible.

So why is hdb2 accessible using that line in fstab, but hda1 and hdb1 require "umask", "uid", and "gid"? What do they mean? I tried chmod on /mnt/hdxx and /dev/hdxx, but it didn't work. Is there a difference between "user" and "users"?

Also, every time I start KDE, my desktop icons' positions haven't been saved and I have to arrange them. Again. Any help with that?

Thank you for any assistance.