Every now and then I buy a flash drive and find that when I mount it it's owned by root and read only except by root. I can, of course, change that by using chown and chmod, but that only lasts until I unmount the drive. Generally, I need to reformat the drive to get it working properly. And, it's not just Fedora; my sister uses Xubuntu, and has the same issue. Does anybody know a way to keep this from happening, or to fix it without reformatting?
On 11/25/20 3:01 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
Every now and then I buy a flash drive and find that when I mount it it's owned by root and read only except by root. I can, of course, change that by using chown and chmod, but that only lasts until I unmount the drive. Generally, I need to reformat the drive to get it working properly. And, it's not just Fedora; my sister uses Xubuntu, and has the same issue. Does anybody know a way to keep this from happening, or to fix it without reformatting?
What filesystem is on it and how are you mounting it?
On 2020-11-25 15:05, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 11/25/20 3:01 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
Every now and then I buy a flash drive and find that when I mount it it's owned by root and read only except by root. I can, of course, change that by using chown and chmod, but that only lasts until I unmount the drive. Generally, I need to reformat the drive to get it working properly. And, it's not just Fedora; my sister uses Xubuntu, and has the same issue. Does anybody know a way to keep this from happening, or to fix it without reformatting?
What filesystem is on it and how are you mounting it?
--> gparted: select the flash drive from the pull down in the upper right
--> View
--> device information
Post a screen shot over on
On Nov 25, 2020, at 19:04, ToddAndMargo via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
--> gparted: select the flash drive from the pull down in the upper right
--> View
--> device informationPost a screen shot over on [redacted]
Or just copy/paste the output of ‘mount’.
-- Jonathan Billings
On 26/11/2020 14:00, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/25/20 6:06 PM, Jonathan Billings wrote:
Or just copy/paste the output of ‘mount’.
*Sigh!* The drive we're having trouble with works Just Fine on my Fedora box, but not on my sister's Ubuntu box. Not a Fedora issue.
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
On 11/26/20 12:34 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
Most of the time, flash drives mount properly for my sister too. Once in a while this comes up for her and/or for me, and I was hoping to get a handle on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
On 26/11/2020 16:35, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 12:34 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
Most of the time, flash drives mount properly for my sister too. Once in a while this comes up for her and/or for me, and I was hoping to get a handle on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
The next time it happens to you check which file system type is on the drive.
FAT and VFAT don't have ownership written to them as Samuel explained. And, as I said, I've never encountered issues with them.
However, file systems such as ext4 do carry ownership information.
So, if a flash drive was formatted with ext4 and not previously mounted, or ownership wasn't established it would mount as root:root
I have a flash drive which was formatted ext4 and used by maria who changed the top level ownership.
So, when I plug it in and hit "mount" it get mounted....
[egreshko@meimei ~]$ whoami egreshko
[egreshko@meimei ~]$ df -T | grep media /dev/sdg1 ext4 7654088 17232 7228332 1% /run/media/egreshko/ADrive
[egreshko@meimei ~]$ ll -d /run/media/egreshko/ADrive drwxr-xr-x. 3 maria maria 4096 Nov 26 16:46 /run/media/egreshko/ADrive
The expected behavior.
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
Ed Greshko writes:
On 26/11/2020 16:35, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 12:34 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
Most of the time, flash drives mount properly for my sister too. Once in a while this comes up for her and/or for me, and I was hoping to get a handle on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
The next time it happens to you check which file system type is on the drive.
FAT and VFAT don't have ownership written to them as Samuel explained. And, as I said, I've never encountered issues with them.
It seems what's described here is that, for some odd reason, the flash drives get mounted occasionally as read-only, so this is not an ownership issue.
On 26/11/2020 22:44, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Ed Greshko writes:
On 26/11/2020 16:35, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 12:34 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
Most of the time, flash drives mount properly for my sister too. Once in a while this comes up for her and/or for me, and I was hoping to get a handle on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
The next time it happens to you check which file system type is on the drive.
FAT and VFAT don't have ownership written to them as Samuel explained. And, as I said, I've never encountered issues with them.
It seems what's described here is that, for some odd reason, the flash drives get mounted occasionally as read-only, so this is not an ownership issue.
You don't think someone could mistake not being able to write to the drive because of an ownership/permission as it being "read-only"?
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
On 27/11/2020 00:31, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 26/11/2020 22:44, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Ed Greshko writes:
On 26/11/2020 16:35, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 12:34 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
Most of the time, flash drives mount properly for my sister too. Once in a while this comes up for her and/or for me, and I was hoping to get a handle on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
The next time it happens to you check which file system type is on the drive.
FAT and VFAT don't have ownership written to them as Samuel explained. And, as I said, I've never encountered issues with them.
It seems what's described here is that, for some odd reason, the flash drives get mounted occasionally as read-only, so this is not an ownership issue.
You don't think someone could mistake not being able to write to the drive because of an ownership/permission as it being "read-only"?
Remember, in the initial post it was stated.....
"Every now and then I buy a flash drive and find that when I mount it it's owned by root and read only except by root."
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
Ed Greshko writes:
On 27/11/2020 00:31, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 26/11/2020 22:44, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Ed Greshko writes:
On 26/11/2020 16:35, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 12:34 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
FWIW, I have a Ubuntu VM and the same flash drive that I used on Fedora works the same way on it. The system mounts it for me, as me. It is ubuntu 20.04 if that makes any difference.
Most of the time, flash drives mount properly for my sister too. Once in a while this comes up for her and/or for me, and I was hoping to get a handle on how to deal with the issue once and for all.
The next time it happens to you check which file system type is on the drive.
FAT and VFAT don't have ownership written to them as Samuel explained. And, as I said, I've never encountered issues with them.
It seems what's described here is that, for some odd reason, the flash drives get mounted occasionally as read-only, so this is not an ownership issue.
You don't think someone could mistake not being able to write to the drive because of an ownership/permission as it being "read-only"?
Remember, in the initial post it was stated.....
"Every now and then I buy a flash drive and find that when I mount it it's owned by root and read only except by root."
Well, this /has/ happened to me occasionally. I have this whole setup going where I have a radio attached to audio-in, a daily cron job that records audio, and converts it to mp3.
I plug in my mp3 player in the evening, and another cron job copies the files to the mp3 player at preset times, expecting it to be automounted.
A few times in the past it failed, I looked and found that, for some reason, the mp3 player was automounted read-only, mount showed the "ro" flag. Unmounting and plugging it back in remounted in normally. Rather odd, but it wasn't enough of a hassle to look into this further.
On 27/11/2020 02:34, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 9:31 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
You don't think someone could mistake not being able to write to the drive because of an ownership/permission as it being "read-only"?
The permissions are full for root, and r-x for everybody else.
Which isn't equivalent to "read-only". A "read-only" file system will not allow the root user to write to it either.
As I mentioned, I got the same expected results in Ubuntu as I did in Fedora for the each of the file system types tested.
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
On 11/26/20 2:43 PM, Ed Greshko wrote:
As I mentioned, I got the same expected results in Ubuntu as I did in Fedora for the each of the file system types tested.
Most of the time I do too; that's why I didn't test it on Fedora before asking. My sister has an account at the Ubuntu forum, and I'll let people here know if they come up with anything.
On 27/11/2020 02:34, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/26/20 9:31 AM, Ed Greshko wrote:
You don't think someone could mistake not being able to write to the drive because of an ownership/permission as it being "read-only"?
The permissions are full for root, and r-x for everybody else.
Oh, additionally, a "read-only" file system will not be reflected in the "permissions" as there is no relationship.
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
On 11/25/20 7:32 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/25/20 4:05 PM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
What filesystem is on it and how are you mounting it?
I'd presume VFAT, and I'm just inserting the drive and letting the OS do its thing, and my sister's doing the same way on Ubuntu.
I've never had a problem with a FAT formatted drive. FAT doesn't have internal permissions, so if it's mounted by your user, then you have full permission. if you run into this problem again, then get the line for this drive from the "mount" output.
On 26/11/2020 12:02, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 11/25/20 7:32 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
On 11/25/20 4:05 PM, Samuel Sieb wrote:
What filesystem is on it and how are you mounting it?
I'd presume VFAT, and I'm just inserting the drive and letting the OS do its thing, and my sister's doing the same way on Ubuntu.
I've never had a problem with a FAT formatted drive. FAT doesn't have internal permissions, so if it's mounted by your user, then you have full permission. if you run into this problem again, then get the line for this drive from the "mount" output.
I too have no problems with VFAT. Just inserted a flash drive in my F33/KDE system. The "Disk/Devices" systray widget had a mount button and upon hitting it.....
[egreshko@meimei 4A00-13F0]$ df -T | grep vfat /dev/sdg1 vfat 7840800 640 7840160 1% /run/media/egreshko/4A00-13F0
And...
[egreshko@meimei 4A00-13F0]$ ll /run/media/egreshko/4A00-13F0/ total 64 drwxr-xr-x. 3 egreshko egreshko 32768 Dec 13 2019 Android drwxr-xr-x. 2 egreshko egreshko 32768 Dec 13 2019 LOST.DIR
So, the system mounted it for me, as me.
--- The key to getting good answers is to ask good questions.
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Ed Greshko -
Joe Zeff -
Jonathan Billings -
Sam Varshavchik -
Samuel Sieb -
ToddAndMargo