Ubuntu

have second partition of hard drive.. cannot use it root ownership???

Asked by Kev

I have used gparted to create a separate data storage for my hardy install.
2 things I need
1. I cannot do anything with it yet as it says all permission is "root" I want to create directories and other bits. So is there a way using a GUI in a menu somewhere to give me access to make the changes needed or do I HAVE to use terminal commands? ( would prefer not to) as I do not like using commands I have not yet understood.

2. Is there a way to place my home folder there as I am still playing with hardy and often do full reinstalls to make a clean start again when I have tweaked something too much. That way at least my personal files are safe.

Yes you are right in thinking " this is an ex-window user" ... but an enlightened one switching to Ubuntu.:)
Many thanks.....

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Bert Van de Poel
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Best Bert Van de Poel (bhack) said : 		#1

Well, I don't know an easy way to change permissions in a GUI that I know fully works so I'll hope you don't mind executing these commands:
(first open a terminal off course)
cd /media/ #This changes the directory to media, if that's where the HD is mounted in
sudo chown -r root:plugdev partition #This changes the owner of all files inside partition and partition itself to root, and also the group plugdev (which you are a user of) + please change partition to the directory name

Normally this will have it working.
If it doesn't work yet try this:
sudo chmod -r 770 partition #This changes the permissions the user, group and others have + please change partition to the directory name

Now the second question is for as far as I know impossible to do with a GUI but quite easy with the command line.
Automounting happens via /etc/fstab
so if you do "sudo gedit /etc/fstab" you can edit it
Mine looks like this:
# /dev/sdb5
UUID=abc8469e-0a50-4dd2-a852-3b524b81b59f /home ext3 relatime 0 2

Now keep in mind that it will not have the structure a normal home partition has so I'm not sure how the system is going to react so I advise you to do the partitioning stuff in the installer.
If the partition stuff comes up in the installer, just chose "manual partitioning" or something like it, and make your partitions yourself, then just put the mountpoints on the right partitions. like the partition to install to / the home partition /home windows in something like /media/windows and then it's done all for you.

I hope that wasn't to un-understandable and if it was just reply and I'll clarify.

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Kev (kevvroxx) said : 		#2

thanks Bert
I did mess it up but not to worry I just removed the partition and will play with it another time... I just do not see why I can auto mount ntfs drives and the one that is formatted to ext3 for linux will not be used and found... there must be a simple way... not to worry I will relook at this again later thank you for your advice anyway.