Change permission for windows partition

Hi,

I installed opensuse 11.1. I have one harddisk and two partitions. One for windows. I can read files in this partiotion but can t change them. I only can if I am root.
I tried to login as root and change permission by right-clicking -> properties and permission. But I can t change it. It jumps back to the old permission.
The owner of the folder is root and users can only read.
I am a newbie and tried with chmod. But it didn t work neither.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Kluni

Are you mounting the windows partition manually or automatically?

If manually, use the options as follows:
mount /dev/xxx /windows -t auto -o uid=1000,gid=100

Here,
“dev/xxx” is the windows partition you are mounting (use the appropriate name from your system. It will be something similar to /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 etc.).
“/windows” is the directory where you mount the windows partition. (Substitute your correct directory name.)
uid=1000,gid=100 (The ID for the first user and group ID of the “users” group in openSUSE. If you want to get these values, just type id from any terminal after logging in).

If the mounting is done automatically by the system, you have to edit the file (as root) /etc/fstab.
In this file, you will see an entry corresponding to the windows directory. Options can be set in the fourth column. just edit it to make uid=1000,gid=100 there.

Reboot after this (or unmount and mount that partition again).

Permissions and ownership in NTFS partitions are dictated entirely in the mount options contained in the mount command/description (e.g. the options suggested by syampillai “-o uid=1000,gid=100” give ownership to user=1000 and group=users). Linux commands chown (to change ownership) and chmod (to change permissions) don’t work on NTFS partitions.

I just tried the suggestion of syampillai; viz:
mount /dev/xxx /windows -t auto -o uid=1000,gid=100
It locked up my system and I had to pull the plug to reboot.

I suggest the more conventional form as follows:
mount /dev/xxx /windows -t ntfs-3g -o uid=1000,gid=100
which worked fine

Just how you mount the drive depends on whether it’s an external drive or an internal drive; which is it?

it is an internal drive

Even as root, the terminal says (if I try /etc/fstab):
bash: no permission

I think my windows partiotion is automatically mounted because I can see it without doing something

/etc/fstab is only part of the command you should enter into a console – see later.

You have an internal drive. Internal drives are mounted by putting a line in the file system table (/etc/fstab) which tells the operating system how you want the operating system to mount the partition.
You should run this command and post the results back here so we can see what is currently in fstab for the partition:

cat /etc/fstab | grep ntfs

If you copy that dialogue back here, we should be able to tell you how to change it.

the result was:

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_6L160M0_L3062FJG-part1 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users, fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_6L160M0_L3062FJG-part5 /windows/D ntfs-3g users,gid=users, fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0

Make them like this:

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_6L160M0_L3062FJG-part1 /windows/C   ntfs-3g defaults,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_6L160M0_L3062FJG-part5 /windows/D   ntfs-3g defaults,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0

First back the file up with this command:

sudo cp /etc/fstab/etc/fstab.backup

Then open the file for editing with this command if you used Gnome:

gnomesu gedit /etc/fstab

or this if you use kde:

kdesu kwrite /etc/fstab

and very carefully make the changes.

Here’s the reference: HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access in openSUSE 10, 11