keep loosing wirte permission on mounted VFAT drive

[nusliv]

hi guys,

i am using Kubuntu Breezy. i have 3 partitions on my HDD, one NTFS for windows, one FAT32 for common data, and one reiserfs partition for linux.

In the fstab i changed the owner of the drive to my username (nus). and when i mount the dirve (mount -a) it does give me write permission, but the problem is that it automatically looses this Wittie permission and the drive becomes readonly. I am not sure what triggers this.

When this happens doing a ls -l still shows the correct owner and permissions

nus@Slash:/media$ ls -l
total 12
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2006-02-03 17:56 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2006-02-03 17:56 cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 23 nus root 4096 1969-12-31 19:00 data
dr-x------ 1 nus root 8192 2006-02-18 13:01 windows

but i cannot write to the data drive.

I am not sure what triggers this. It happens even if it is just lying around encoding a video, or perhapps downloading a file to the data drive, and suddenly the process will stop in between giving an error saying it cannot write to drive.

This is what my fstab file looks like:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda3 / reiserfs notail 0 1
/dev/sda1 /media/windows ntfs uid=nus 0 0
/dev/sda5 /media/data vfat uid=nus 0 0
/dev/sda4 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

I have also tried using the umask option and setting it to 000, but even that didnt work.

Please help!!

[aysiu]

Re: keep loosing wirte permission on mounted VFAT drive

It sounds as if you've already tried changing

/dev/sda5    /media/data   vfat  uid=nus    0    0

to

/dev/sda5    /media/data   vfat  iocharset=utf8,umask=000    0    0

The only other thing I can think of is changing the mount point to something outside of media.

/media is its own special folder that does special things. For example, before I turn on my external hard drive, there's no mount point for it in /media. Once I turn it on, and it automounts at /media/LACIE. Once I unmount it, the folder /media/LACIE disappears.

Maybe you should try this (no guarantees it'll work):

sudo umount /dev/sda5
sudo mkdir /data
sudo kwrite /etc/fstab

then replace the entire file with this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>  <type> <options>    <dump> <pass>
proc      /proc      proc  defaults    0    0
/dev/sda3    /        reiserfs notail     0    1
/dev/sda1    /media/windows   ntfs  uid=nus    0    0
/dev/sda5    /data   vfat  iocharset=utf8,umask=000    0    0
/dev/sda4    none      swap  sw       0    0
/dev/scd0    /media/cdrom0  udf,iso9660 user,noauto   0    0

Save and exit KWrite and then

sudo mount -a

[jamesr]

Re: keep loosing wirte permission on mounted VFAT drive

Aysiu

did you not mean

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/sda3       /               reiserfs notail          0       1
/dev/sda1       /media/windows     ntfs    uid=nus        0       0
/dev/sda5       /data     vfat    iocharset=utf8,umask=000        0       0
/dev/sda4       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

ie the line that refers to /dev/sda5 is /data not /media/data

[nusliv]

Re: keep loosing wirte permission on mounted VFAT drive

thanx guys. i will try changing the folder from media to mnt or something.

also, i used
/dev/sda5 /data vfat uid=nus,umask=000 0 0

and not
/dev/sda5 /data vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

so will try adding the iocharset option too

thanx again. will try it out for a day and see if it stays writable.

[aysiu]

Re: keep loosing wirte permission on mounted VFAT drive

jamesr, you're on the ball. I'll edit my original post to be more consistent.

[nusliv]

Re: keep loosing wirte permission on mounted VFAT drive

well guys thanx for you help, but the porblem was not with fstab. it was something pretty stupid.
am posting this in case some one else ever faces this problem.

well the problem was that used a software which created huge temporary files. now the max file size of FAT32 is 4GB. so when ever it exceeded that limit, i used to get the readonly error and i lost the write permission on the whole drive (atleast until i remounted it).

if remounting the drive also does not work, try to scan the disk for errors.