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balaji
Asked: 2018-06-05 01:54:40 +0800 CST

USB drive mounts but user can't write to drive?

  • 772

I've got a bare bones Ubuntu 10.04 set up (xorg, openbox, usbmount). My (vfat32) stick drive mounts, and I can see what is in the one directory on the drive, but I can't write to the drive unless I use sudo. I tried the obvious step of attempting to change permissions on the drive

keith@quiet:~$ sudo chmod -R 777 /media/usb0
[sudo] password for keith: 
keith@quiet:~$ ls /media/usb0
stuff
keith@quiet:~$ touch /media/usb0/readme.txt
touch: cannot touch `/media/usb0/readme.txt': Permission denied
mount usb

2 Answers

  1. I can be that the filesystem is incorrect. I had this before. you should mount the usb including a filesystem:

    mount -t vfat /dev/USB /media/usb0
    or
    mount -t vfat /dev/USB /media/usb0 -o uid=YOURID,gid=YOURID

    when the system does not detect the filesystem it will say permission denied because it can't write to it and it just assumes that you don't have permission.

    • -1

  2. Anyway, to add an entry into fstab it would go something like this:

    Open Terminal

    Type sudo mkdir /media/usbstick

    Type gksu gedit /etc/fstab

    Add an entry that looks like this:

    UUID=3C52-C8C5 /media/usbstick vfat user,umask=000,utf8,flush,noauto 0 0

    The "user" and "noauto" will allow the user to mount the device automatically when inserted.

    The "umask=000" will allow read / write access to everyone.

    When you're done, save fstab, exit gedit, and back in the Terminal type:

    sudo mount -a

    Then insert the stick and find out if I'm full of hooey

    • -2