Read only access for Windows Fat32 drives

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I have been using Tumbleweed for many years and did a fresh install at the weekend using the latest snapshot ISO.

My system has Windows 10 also installed and I have 4 data partitions (which both tumbleweed and windows use). I included the data partitions when installing and they are mounted at boot but the 3 fat32 data partitions only have read access. This is something that I haven’t come across before. I have used dolphin - super user mode and changed the permissions. These are accepted but do not stick.

My ftsab shows:

HTML Code:
UUID=8c4f847a-aa1e-4245-b034-f48249f9308a / ext4 defaults 0 0UUID=7DC8-F71D /windows/g vfat defaults 0 0UUID=68704A1A7049EF7E /windows/f ntfs defaults 0 0UUID=7F85-5E45 /windows/e vfat defaults 0 0UUID=96D5-A1D3 /windows/d vfat defaults 0 0UUID=966A-6B08 /boot/efi vfat defaults 0 0UUID=2d03bf41-4b86-4b68-9676-eb9383146b2e swap swap defaults 0 0
Have the standard permissions changed with Tumbleweed?

What do I need to do to have read & write access?

Many thanks

#2

Sorry the tags are not clear. Should show as:

UUID=8c4f847a-aa1e-4245-b034-f48249f9308a  /           ext4  defaults  0  0UUID=7DC8-F71D                             /windows/g  vfat  defaults  0  0UUID=68704A1A7049EF7E                      /windows/f  ntfs  defaults  0  0UUID=7F85-5E45                             /windows/e  vfat  defaults  0  0UUID=96D5-A1D3                             /windows/d  vfat  defaults  0  0UUID=966A-6B08                             /boot/efi   vfat  defaults  0  0UUID=2d03bf41-4b86-4b68-9676-eb9383146b2e  swap        swap  defaults  0  0
#3

Please use code tags not HTML code tags.

#4

Show “ls -l /windows/g” or any other mount point that is read-only.

I have used dolphin - super user mode and changed the permissions. These are accepted but do not stick.

FAT does not have any notion of “permissions”, there is no place to store them.

#5

You need to set permissions at mount since DOS is stupid and does not know about permissions as the exist in Unix/Linux

#6

I’m trying to make that easier to read.

Is it possible that your problem is due to “fast boot” in Windows 10?

#7

I usually keep C: as read-only and create a D: drive with r/w permissions so there’s no problems with windows fastboot, but those partitions are ntfs, not vfat:

/windowsC           ntfs-3g    ro,users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=**022**,locale=pt_BR.UTF-8                 0 0
/windowsD            ntfs-3g    noatime,users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=**002**,locale=pt_BR.UTF-8            0 0

A vfat pendrive mounts like this in /etc/mtab:

/dev/sde1 /run/media/HP_TOOLS vfat **rw**,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=100,fmask=0022,
dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro 0 0

So perhaps rw in your fstab will do the trick.

#8

Look with dmesg what the messages are during the mount. When the file system was not properly closed on Windows (as with the suggested “fast boot”), there will be e message saying so and the conclusion to mount it ro.

Also it would be nice to see if it is mounted ro

mount

and search for the correct entry.

#9

Many thanks for all the very helpful replies.

It turned out to be just a rogue install. I wiped the opensuse tumbleweed partitions and reinstalled using a snapshot from November (the last time that I did had done a fresh install). This automatically set up read & write access to the three Fat32 partitions.

Many thanks

#10

I am adding to my original post in case anyone else has a similiar problem, as I have carried out more investigations.

I wiped my opensuse partition and did fresh installs using a number of recent iso snapshots (28012018, 26012018 & 16012018 {+ 30012018 from OpenQA}). All mounted the 3 fat32 data partitions on boot but with read only access. So I went back to the ISO snapshot 06012018 (before libstorage-ng1 was included) wiped my opensuse partition again and installed this. This worked as before mounting the 3 fat32 partitions on boot with read and write access.

I then did an system update using the 30012018 snapshot and this didn’t change the read and write access. But when I then used yast to make an alteration to one of the fat32 data partitioins it threw up a warning about ‘potential damage to data etc’ and when next booting it paused to with an unable to mount drive error.
I found a SLES15 bugzilla report - with the same issue - and have added to that.

#11

You neither explained what was the reason for problem nor how did you fix it, so how is it supposed to help?

I found a SLES15 bugzilla report - with the same issue - and have added to that.

And you do not even provide bug report number.

#12

Sorry for not being more clear.

The issue is as described in my original post - not having write access to shared Fat32 data partitions and not being able to adjust the partition details in Yast (following a fresh install).

I am not now asking for any assistance - my updated post yesterday was just for information in case anyone else encountered a similar problem. The already made bug report (for this issue) is at https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1076305.