solved, thanks to Javier- changing permissions on USB drive

[duck!]

I am a refugee from Mandriva making a first attempt at Kubuntu. So far I like it, especially the ability to write to NTFS drives.

I see lots of threads here about problems with usb external drives. After some messing around, I have my pockey drive automounting and unmounting with no problem. But I still can't read the drive because I don't have permission.

I need to be root to change the permanent permissions... so how do I log on as root. I try typing in root at login but it rejects my user password. What's going on?

[javierrivera]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

The root password is set to some random (and long) value.

Ubuntu (well debian) has taken a different route to system administration than Mandriva. You are expected to use sudo instead of changing to a root user.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Sw...untu/FromLinux

You can still enable root and work as you did on Mandriva, just change the password for the root account. But sudo is quite nicer than expected. I also came from Mandriva and grow used to it quite fast. And I feel it's easier for linux novices.

And I love to be able to browse /var/log/ and see logfiles as an user .

Javier.

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Ok, thanks. That helps. How do I change the root password? I knocked around the login manager with admin activated, but I don't see any way to change passwords or even to add users.

[javierrivera]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

In the System Settings, go to user manager, admin mode, check see system users.

Or in the command line:

$ sudo su
# passwd

But it could be a good idea to try to learn the "debian way of the force".

Javier.

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

I agree that it would be good to learn the way that is intended by the programmers... but in this case there is a bug that apparently I can't fix the debian way.

Mandrake/Mandriva always hid the root user to protect the ignorant from themselves. But in the end, the "Linux way" is to let users do what they want to.

Thanks very much for your help Javier.

edit: ok, sudo su gets me logged on as root. Now how do I change the root password? I can't use the passwd command since I don't know the origianl password.

[javierrivera]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

But in the end, the "Linux way" is to let users do what they want to.

That is as true as it can be.

Javier.

[SheeEttin]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

If that won't work, your root password must have been set. (Or you just need to hit enter.) To change it manually, you can go to /etc/passwd (or /etc/shadow, if that's what it uses) and change the password manually. Make sure you put in the MD5 sum, and not the password itself.
I'm not sure what the files /etc/passwd- and /etc/shadow- are for, but you might want to change them as well.

(Incidentally, the root password isn't set to some long, random value. Since passwords are stored in MD5-hashed form, all you need to do is set the password to something no MD5 hash will match, such as, in my case, "*".)

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Ok, I have more of a handle on the problem now. Under System Settings/Advanced/Disk and filesystems I entered the Administrator password , clicked modify. Then, under Security and Safety, I changed the disk to "writeable" and changed the "files belong to user" from root to my user name.

Then I look at the disk by right clicking under the file manager on disk name. I click on properties, then on permissions. "Owner" is properly shown as my user name, but under "Access permissions" it says that owner "can view content" but not "can view & modify content. If I change that directly or if I go to advanced permissions and click on user- write entries, then click ok on the main screen, I get an error message,"could not change permissions for " drive name.

So the administrator password under Disk and Filesystems doesn't make the needed changes and the advanced permissions dialog doesn't allow input of an administrator password. This is a situation where I need to be root to change the permissions, but I can't log on as root.(I did change the root password, but still am not allowed to log on as root.)

Is there a way to change permissions via the command line?

[SheeEttin]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Well, you could try mounting it with pmount instead of mount (assuming, of course, that there is a "user" option in your fstab), and also making sure you mount it read-write.

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Is there any way to log on as root? I changed the root password but when I try to log on, I get a message that says " root logins are not allowed". Is there any way around this?

[SheeEttin]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Debian does things a little weirdly--rather than logging in as root, you just su to root.
Basically, just go to a terminal, and type "sudo su" (and enter your password) to get to a root shell. If you need KDE apps as root, use "kdesu [app]", e.g. "kdesu konqueror". If you just need a quick command, just "sudo [command]" (e.g. "sudo rm") will work fine.

As for how to enable root logins, if you must, you can probably do it through System Settings > Users & Groups (or whatever it's called).

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

I tried kdesu konqueror to open the properties on the usb drive. When I tried to modify the advanced permissions, I got the same message :
"could not change permissions for media/pockey"

This seems like a serious problem to me. If you can't use an external drive under Feisty Fawn, it's going nowhere. I can't believe Dell is going to sell an operating system without the ability to use an external drive.

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Here is part of my fstab. The last line shows the entry for my external usb drive. Is there anything I can change to make it writeable? Since the pockey is not Automatrix mounted and is NTFS, could that be a reason for the write block? Is there a way to get Automatrix to mount the pockey?

# Generated by Automatix
/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000,uid=0,gid=0,auto,rw,nouse r 0 0
/dev/sda3 /media/sda3 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0
## End of Automatix mounted partitions
/dev/sdb1 /media/pockey ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,auto,rw,users 0 0

[javierrivera]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Well, for sure I can use an external devices on Feisty .

I mean, this looks like a particular problem with your config, not a general problem. So Dell will have no more problem than with windows, at least I have seen windows xp machines unable to open pendrives.

And it's probably not a permission problem at all.

Anyway. Can you give some info, to check if we can troubleshot the problem?.

How is this external device formated? (NTFS,FAT,etc..)
How exactly do you mount it? (KDE windows, manual, wich command)
Is it defined on your fstab?
How you tried to pmount it, instead of mounting*?
Can you give us the output of the mount command with the device attached?
And fdisk -l?
Anything on dmesg?

You seen quite linux-savy, but maybe you are looking at the problem with the wrong angle. You are looking for file permission problems, couldn't it be caused by some problem in mounting?.

Javier.

[duck!]

Re: changing permissions on USB drive

Well, you could try mounting it with pmount instead of mount (assuming, of course, that there is a "user" option in your fstab), and also making sure you mount it read-write.

I did update to install pmount but I have no idea how to use it.