Normal Users can't access windows partitions

[empanyc]

Hello,

I installed Knoppix on my harddisk.
Now I have the problem, that only the Admin (/root) can access the windows-partitions.
I've modified the fstab and mtab, but my changes have no effects. (i added the mount-option
users for example)
Is the problem the autoconfig-routine?

Had anyone a solution for my problem?

Thanks
Mario

[fingers99]

Please post /etc/fstab. But a more likely issue is the permissions for the directory on which the partition is mounted. User, Group and Others need permission to Show Entries and to Enter.

[da.phreak]

Changing the mountpoint's permissions doesn't help for vfat. You have to change the fstab. vfat knows the options uid,gid and umask.

The easiest way to get user-access would be to add umask=777. However, that's quite unsafe, everybody can browse/read/write everything. If you have important data on that partition, you should

- create a new user-group
- add all users that are allowed to access the partition to that group
- mount the partition with "defaults,gid=x,umask=007". You have to replace x with the gid of the group you have created (--> cat /etc/group|less).

[fingers99]

Disagree. Given that you want only one user to have access, the easiest solution is to have the mountpoint in that user's home directory!

[da.phreak]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Changing the mountpoint (it's location) won't help. By default, only root has r/w access to vfat-partitions, no matter where it is mounted. You have to give users r/w access by using those options in the fstab. I know changing the mountpoint's permissions (the directory when not mounted) helps for native Linux-partitions (ext2/reiserfs ...), but not for vfat. That's because vfat doesn't handle permissions, so every file get's the same permissions, no matter what. That's set by the umask=... options in the fstab.

At least that's what worked for me.