USB Flash drives not mounted with correct permissions

[AdmiralFubar]

had trouble writing to a flash drive. checked the permissions, the correct user it there, but the id is root.
when logged in as root and attempt to change permissions i get

Could not modify the ownership of file /media/disk-3. You have insufficient access to the file to perform the change.

now how as root can not have enough permission?

i’ve been up and down the forums and google to no avail. poked around in the fstab and even mtab as there are two files, one a lock, that seems to come from mtab.

any ideas???

[caf4926]

What version of openSUSE?

In any trouble with flash drives. I would normally recommend:
Completely wipe and re-format it. Give it a Label Eg: myusb

test again

[AdmiralFubar]

@caf4926

What version of openSUSE?

In any trouble with flash drives. I would normally recommend:
Completely wipe and re-format it. Give it a Label Eg: myusb

test again

Been there done that, still no go… the problem isnt the drive, ive tried several others, it is how the system mounts it. something isnt right with the permissions and even as ROOT i cant change the permissions! says they are insufficient

running 11.3 and kde. Linux 2.6.34.7-0.7-default x86_64

[caf4926]

poked around in the fstab and even mtab as there are two files, one a lock, that seems to come from mtab

What do you mean by this?
Is it that you see a file on the drive with a padlock related to mtab?

[AdmiralFubar]

@caf4926

What do you mean by this?
Is it that you see a file on the drive with a padlock related to mtab?

oh yeah i should have been a little more clear about that.
maybe just have to wait till 11.4 is out…

[caf4926]

Is this the same with flash drives? Or do you just have the one.

Use fdisk -l
to make sure you identify your drive correctly and then as su -

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb

where sdb is the flash drive, change as required

then partition and format it either in winders or with gparted to FAT
Giving it a label as I suggested

[DenverD]

to me, it sounds like you have messed up .ICEauthority by letting root
touch it…

both the .*authority files must be able to be read by the user ONLY…

i guess you logged into KDE or GNOME as root to fix it, right?

–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.0.11, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11

[AdmiralFubar]

@DenverD

to me, it sounds like you have messed up .ICEauthority by letting root
touch it…

both the .*authority files must be able to be read by the user ONLY…

i guess you logged into KDE or GNOME as root to fix it, right?

uhm yes and no (i use kde)
the problem is i cannot change the group id. the group id is set to root, and even as root i cannot set it to anything else!
the error message below is what i get in this attempt.

Could not modify the ownership of file /media/disk-3. You have insufficient access to the file to perform the change.

this problem persists i with all flash drives. I have a usb harddrive that works just fine.
I’m still looking to resolve this. something is not right, i’m starting to think a bug may have been introduced in mounting the mounting of flash drives.

[hendersj]

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:36:02 +0000, AdmiralFubar wrote:

> Could not modify the ownership of file /media/disk-3. You have
> insufficient access to the file to perform the change.

You can’t change it because the drive is mounted - even root can’t change
it when the device is mounted.

The issue is going to be with the automounter that you’re using. Is the
device in the /etc/fstab file on your system? (If it is, it’s not the
automounter).

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

[AdmiralFubar]

@hendersj

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:36:02 +0000, AdmiralFubar wrote:

> Could not modify the ownership of file /media/disk-3. You have
> insufficient access to the file to perform the change.

You can’t change it because the drive is mounted - even root can’t change
it when the device is mounted.

The issue is going to be with the automounter that you’re using. Is the
device in the /etc/fstab file on your system? (If it is, it’s not the
automounter).

No it isnt in there specifically. sooooooooooo how do i go about resolving this?

[nrickert]

If this is a Windows (or FAT) file system), then you cannot change ownership because the file system does not support it.

You need to give the ownership in the mount command or the fstab entry if mounted from there. If already mounted, you would have to umount, then remount with the owner you want.

mount -o uid=1000 -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt

(change as appropriate).

[AdmiralFubar]

@nrickert

If this is a Windows (or FAT) file system), then you cannot change ownership because the file system does not support it.

You need to give the ownership in the mount command or the fstab entry if mounted from there. If already mounted, you would have to umount, then remount with the owner you want.

mount -o uid=1000 -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt

(change as appropriate).

some progress with this…it will mount in /mnt location with the correct permissions.

now what has happened to /media for the flash drives? the two harddrives i have there, can have the permissions changed.

i had an odd thing happen several updates ago, somehow the desktop version of the linux kernel was installed. i noticed that pressing esc key during boot to get the boot messages screen now takes much longer to do. not sure if this is related. I had this once before and thought it was something i had carelessly done.