Hello, I am trying to set disk permissions on a Suse 11.2 installation. I have a disk that I want to put software onto but the installer cannot access the disk. Can someone please tell me how to do a chmod on a disk other then the main system disk?
Thanks
Scott
It would be best if you ran the following terminal command so that we might understand your disk setup as being mounted in openSUSE. Open up a terminal session and type the following command:
su -
password:
cat /etc/fstab
Copy and paste this information into a message (Using the Code # Advanced Editor function would be best). Then tell us the exact command you are using. If this disk is not in your fstab file, how do you access it, like using a file manager? Basically the exact steps you use when the problem comes up.
Thank You,
I would have asked something different then jdmcdaniel3 did. That illustrates that your post is not very clear to me. It lacks every indication of what you are using (openSUSE level, etc) or doing. Is there any message that tells you that you (normal user, root?) have no access to something? Then please show it.
Because the expression “set disk permissions” may either be just a very loose way to tell what you want, but also may show lack of knowledge, I take the freedom to give you this link, which may contain things you allready know: SDB:Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points - openSUSE
Here are some notes: Changing Ownership with chown and Permissions with chmod
But remember, you can’t run chown or chmod on FAT or NTFS partitions; if you want to alter those, supply some more info.
Maybe he means such a sort of thing, but you can not change ownership of disks, you can change ownership of files with that.
I hate to give advice as long as I do not understand the question ;). It may create misunderstanding and even havoc 
.
You are in error my friend, try it out.
hcvv said: but you can not change ownership of disks, and swerdna says: You are in error my friend, try it out.
OK swerdna, you got me. Where do I go to change the ownership of a disk? I never doubt you, I just am wondering where this is.
Thank You,
Mount the disk, e.g. sda12, in some place you like, e.g. a folder called “xyz” located at /path_to/yyz
Maybe the fstab line ends up looking something like this:
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD5000BEVT-60ZAT1_WD-WXN509S27952-part12 /path_to/xyz ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 2
or perhaps like this:
/dev/sda12 /path_to/xyz ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 2
Those are both the same mount, just mounted two ordinary, standard ways. The disk/partition will belong to user:group = root:root. Suppose that you had just created the partition sda12, fresh with no files, and mounted it as above. But you want to start out with the disk belonging to someone different from root. To change the ownership to “billybob” in the group “users” you issue this command (immediately after the disk is mounted):
sudo chown billybob:users /path_to/xyz
That will stick; no need to alter the line in fstab.
Note that this is simply a case of setting the ownership of the top directory of the mounted filesystem and is in principle no different from setting the ownership of an interior directory. So there is no such thing as disk permission per se. If the ownership of an interior directory is changed to belong to some other account, normal access rules will apply. So the top directory has no magical significance.
Basically there are the Linux filesystems where every object carries ownership and permissions. Then there are the non-Linux filesystems such as FAT where there is no per-object ownership and the owerships are faked up in the mount parameters. NTFS does have ownership info but they are Windows info and have to be mapped to Linux ownership. Sometimes this simply bypassed by using a mount option to specify the “owner”.
OP, your question is a bit lacking in detail. It would be better to tell us what it is you are trying to do and we can start from there rather than presume some solution or mechanism. You may find that applying the wrong solution may be counterproductive.
As I was asked to answer on Swerna’s post, this is my answer, but Ihave nothing to add to the above.
Changing ownership of a disk to me means: selling it.
hcvv says: Changing ownership of a disk to me means: selling it.
hcvv I am thinking that swerdna got us on a technicality while your analysis of the situation seems to be the most correct. lol!
Thank You,
Hey, hey. This is open source right? You mean give it away. 
hcvv says: Changing ownership of a disk to me means: selling it.
binaryfudge wrote:
> Hey, hey. This is open source right? You mean give it away. 
open source != give it away
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
The OP wanted to chown the access to a disk. Using chown (and chmod) is how to get it. The rest is just wordsmithing and semantics.
That’s what the OP claimed, but depending on the exact problem there might have been other ways to solve it, e.g. creating a directory on the partition owned by him.
There are nearly always other methods in Linux, so yes, if OP wanted space for root and space for OP, then a separate directory would be good, or alternatively OP could chown the mount to OP and make a separate folder for root to use. But I suspect OP wasn’t too worried about root’s needs.
swerdna wrote:
> I suspect OP wasn’t too worried about root’s needs.
i read the post when it was fresh and didn’t then (and still don’t)
see either a clear question nor enough info provided by the OP to
suspect anything other than it was written by one without sufficient
Linux knowledge to adequately frame the problem faced…
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
I have to be with ken_yap and DenverD. The original post does not define the problem even vaguely (one and a half line of text almost never does). That is where I start asking questions in the hope that somewhere in that process the OP and I (and the others) agree on about similar wording when meaning things and then come to a conclusion what the OP is doing (something with install?), what he wants to achieve (some sort of access for whome on what?), etc.
I know other people read such a post and then give and answer to what they think the problem is in the hope that the OP is helped asap. My idea is that when this jumping to conclusions is correct it helps indeed, but when it is wrongly done and the OP tries to understand the answer to the problem he does not have, a whole bunch of misunderstandings and maybe fatal conclusions might follow.
In principle these are different approaches:
a) give an answer, when it does not satisfy the OP, his reaction might reveal more info, or
b) try to understand the whole case and then give an answer.
I try to walk path b 
Darn it – i know the forum administrator’s power-user buttons are in the control panel somewhere, just can’t find the right one ATM. You know, the one that makes ppl who disagree with me vanish. I’ll have to ask Kim where it is. :beat-up:
I don’t know where these buttons are swerdna, but a few times I saw my life flashing before my eyes just after a read a message from you. Perhaps it is not a coincidence? rotfl!
Thank You,