USB Drive Permissions

[thenktor]

But there is FAT, so you can just use it if you want plug and play USB sticks. On the other hand it's good to have correct file permissions on external drives. I expect to have them on my ext3 formatted backup drive.

If you want it working another way you can use fstab entries with umask.

[mimosa]

I'll roll up my sleeves, then, and get stuck in, where angels fear to tread

[supposed to be a smile there but I can't make it work ]

Seriously, though, if I didn't actually rather enjoy messing around under the bonnet, competent or not, I doubt I'd have the patience.

Thanks to all for your generous help along the learning curve!

[wayne]

Thinking about it, permissions issues in general - for instance, involving hard disk partitions - are something I have never really managed to get on top of. The question is, is this something that every new Linux user needs to make a considerable effort to learn to manage effectively -

just my own experience,, i am a new Linux OS user ( just started linux for short time), but at Win XP time, often i was told to learn partition for ease of maintenance on my own file management and backup. So that makes me started using windows partition tool and i find it helps moving myself from simple windows user to a intermediate user, because after that i help several other reinstall win xp with partitions, often i added some encryptions for them on a partition because they constantly worried about security and i believe encryption would resolve some kind of mental worry.

So my thinking is, the first level of user can be doing very fine without knowing anything about partitions. Win7 have three partitions and many people are not awared or not even want to be aware since they do not need to.

however, when a person decides to be a step more than a new user.... says become intermediate user, then learning partition becomes necessary, even on Win 7 / XP!

i.e. there is no easy way and no way to make it easy - or would it be desirable to make it more user-friendly for newcomers to Linux, and indeed general everday use, as in "I just want to copy my files"? It's something that seems to cause a lot of frustration and must put many people off completely at an early stage. Is there a deep intrinsic reason why it's so hard? Or is it actually not as hard as some of us think?

for new users on linux : several full features Linux distros also handle partition in the way that new user do not even need to worry.. as long as he choose install side-by-side, or just run Linux using Live CD. Some live CD get boot up in less than 10 minutes and you are there on business..
to me : YES, new linux users can be totally free from 'partition thingy"

some distros even make network file sharing so simple that it is as simple as WinXP!
just mouse over the directory or file of folder, right click, click click , ok,, that is all, it is shared!!.
easier than win7, much much easier than Vista.

i had used USB thumb formated with FAT32 and all files coping by win XP, win 7, linux, puppy, all can share without issues.

by the way, when we dual or multi boot LinuxOSes with Win OS, Linus OS would 'see' all win OS files and able to access them. not the other way round... that is good and nice features.

your last sentence is very true to me. When i started Linux, i get stucked. and sadly the Linux installation did not bring any speed advantage to my old computer old Win XP!.

so on my second time i started linux learning, i am more determined to learn..in fact i tried many type of linux os to expose and learn the differences so now i am more comfortable on partitions, installation, command line, etc..

[JRD]

You must distinguish two types of USB disks:
- the ones used as USB key, where permissions are in no interrest at all.
- the ones where a real disk is used and the permissions are used.

Fat(32) can handle the first type. EXT, XFS, Reiserfs & co can handle the second one. There is no mean to use a Unix filesystem with a mode with "no permission", at least using only the filesystem.

One solution, could be to use some automatic fixing permissions. But this requires a standardisation among Unix (or at least Linux) OSes. Something like:
If there is a file called ".noPermission" at the root of the filesystem, then the filesystem is mounted (by root as it is needed to access hardware, but with the use of hal or udev) and the owner is forced to the current user, with a umode of 0000.

This could work, but it will slow down mounting it, and requires a standardisation process. This is just an idea.