why cant i write to ANYTHING??

ok ive posted on here b4 about problems writting to my fat32 hard drive on my linux/winme box.....now, i cant even write to my linux partitions...it just says "Unable to create file" or "Access to this device is denied" the drive/partition is mounted...i dont get it...i can write to the My Documents folder on the ME drive, but nothing more...i set the media to writable from read only, and in properties i allow everything. Its knoppix and i did the newbie install so i dont really have different names to login to.....need some help here! thanx in advance

Have you tried Partition Magic to check the partitions...

Also, how old is the HD...almost sounds like my old WD right before it died...

By default the normal user "knoppix" does not have permission to write to most of the linux filesystem. You should be able to write to files in /home/knoppix though. The user root should be able to write everywhere in the linux filesystem. You can switch to root temporarily by using the su command in a termnial. There's also a way to launch konqueror, the graphical filebrowser in root mode.

You can adjust some of the permissions for mounted partitions (such as the ME partition) in /etc/fstab by adding a umask option.

This is one of the early and tough lessons of linux- its unix style file permissions make the system very secure, and can be difficult to get used to at first.

haha yea it is a WD....both are actually....im not in linux right now, im updating ME....now whats this unmask option u speak of arkaine? moreso how do i do it? total newbie here.....im still willin to deal with this tho, since im not a fan of windows anymore

ok there is an unmask option in my fstab, its unmask=000 , should i set it to unmask=022 like in the floppy drive? and i cant for some reason really edit the fstab now, why is this?

In a terminal, su to root and open /etc/fstab with a text editor.

su
[enter root's password]
kedit /etc/fstab

Here's an example of how to make a filesystem listed in /etc/fstab mount so a normal user can access it:

/dev/hda2 /mnt/win vfat auto,rw,user 0 0

It's the user option at the end that's important.

You'd also want to make sure that the user can access the mountpoint, in the exampe its /mnt/win.

chmod 777 /mnt/win

would allow everyone full access to that particular directory.




For umask, permissions are opposite of normal permissions, so 000 = 777, which is full access for all. 022 = 755 which is full access for the owner and read/write (but not execute) for everyone else.

/dev/hda2 /mnt/win vfat auto,rw,umask=000 0 0

You do need to be root in order to edit any files in /etc.

Also, note it's umask, not unmask.

ok, i cant even save it if i do change it, what the hell?

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/cdrom /cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
/dev/dvd /dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
/dev/cdaudio /cdaudio iso9660 defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hdb5 none swap defaults 0 0
# Added by KNOPPIX
/dev/hdb6 /mnt/hdb6 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0


ok, what can i fix?

I'm Having the same issue and im a complete n00b at linux. i dont know how to mount the hard drive also i would love "click": by "clcik instuctions. thanks

haha thought this post died...

Anyways i installed knoppix as a debian install...allows me to write to everything. For some reason, this one finds the CDROM drive....i had it not find it the first 3 or 4 times around, but this time it found it.