# Can't change permissions on USB stick [SOLVED]

## justin_brody

Hi,

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here.  I want to be able to write to my USB drive as a user.  

I mount it (as root) with:

```

samsara ~ # mount -t vfat /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb/

samsara ~ # cd /mnt/usb/

samsara usb # chmod 777 .

samsara usb # ls -al

total 2432

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   16384 Dec 31  1969 .

drwxr-xr-x 9 root root     240 Jan 13 17:43 ..

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  777740 Mar 29  2007 ImationLOCKv108-BManual.pdf

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1609728 Mar 16  2007 LOCKv116.exe

drwxr-xr-x 4 root root   32768 Jan 22 07:50 portfolio-retreat

```

So it didn't actually change to 777.  Anyone know why and what I can do to let my regular user write to this file?

Thanks!Last edited by justin_brody on Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:20 am; edited 1 time in total

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## eccerr0r

The vfat filesystem does not support Unix permissions.  You'll either

1) use another filesystem  :Smile: 

2) Mount with global permissions to the drive.  specify umask=000 in fstab, and everyone can use that disk.

3) Mount as a user.  Specify "user" in fstab or I don't know the new-fangled udev method to handle this.  Then the user that mounts the drive has full access to the disk.

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## Abraxas

 *justin_brody wrote:*   

> Hi,
> 
> I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here.  I want to be able to write to my USB drive as a user.  
> 
> I mount it (as root) with:
> ...

 

FAT doesn't support permissions.  Try this guide... http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mount_Windows_partitions_%28DOS%2C_FAT%2C_NTFS%29

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## StarDragon

 *justin_brody wrote:*   

> I mount it (as root)

 

Try to mount it from a regular user by adding it to /etc/fstab. It worked for me.

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## schachti

 *StarDragon wrote:*   

> Try to mount it from a regular user by adding it to /etc/fstab. It worked for me.

 

Or use the appropriate uid= and gid= options in /etc/fstab or as a parameter when mounting. See http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mount_Windows_partitions_%28DOS%2C_FAT%2C_NTFS%29 for a good overview.

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## kortec

My fstab line for my fat32 partition looks like this, just for reference:

```

/dev/hda2               /mnt/media              vfat            user,noatime,rw,gid=media,umask=007     0 0

```

which mounts hda2 to /mnt/media, such that it can be done by a user, but only gives meaningful permissions to people in the media group. Might help.

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## justin_brody

Great - this worked.   Thanks for all the responses!

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