Ubuntu
util-linux package

Why I can write on an USB disk and cannot on another one?

Asked by Uqbar

I have two external USB HDs. Bot are formatted as XFS.
Here they are:

brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 48 2011-10-22 13:17 /dev/sdd
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 49 2011-10-22 13:17 /dev/sdd1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 64 2011-10-22 16:44 /dev/sde
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 65 2011-10-22 16:44 /dev/sde1

They get mounted like this:

/dev/sdd1 on /media/NOA-WD-2048G type xfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks)
/dev/sde1 on /media/WD500-NOA type xfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks)

But:

~ ls /media

drwxr-xr-x 6 uqbar uqbar 97 2011-10-22 16:44 WD500-NOA
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6 2011-10-20 17:46 NOA-WD-2048G

So I can only operate (as the administrative user) only on the first one, while the second requires me to be root.

Why?
How can I fix this unnatural behavior and have both mounted as the first one?

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Usually a filesystem with errors is mounted as read only to protect data.

So please made a full check on the external device if is a ntfs filesystem please do it from Windows.

And please be sure to do not dirty unmount your external device from your pc.

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#2

Marco, as I said the file system is XFS for both disks.
I've also done the same attempt on a brand new Oneiric machine (Kubuntu), I have first formatted one of the disks (the one that's not willing to be owned by my main user). The "good one" is also error free. But nothing changed.
The disk has been freshly formatted, the system has been freshly installed (no upgrade from any previous version).
Nonetheless, one disk is available to my main user, the other one is not.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#4

None has an idea? Any idea?

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#5

Could you provide end of /etc/fstab.

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Uqbar (uqbar) said : 		#6

proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=71c3a8de-9155-4cd0-a63b-a51bf2e7207a / xfs defaults 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=f989787b-cf6e-45c9-bd14-6ae2cbd240df /home xfs defaults 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=6c8ce273-681d-4da9-955f-0e655ecee26a none swap sw 0 0

Ther's no mention to any other disk but the one and only internal one.

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#7

Mount disk NOA-WD-2048G
Run commands:
   sudo chown -R uqbar:uqbar /media/NOA-WD-2048G
The file system of disk includes the user and group rights for each file.
When you make file system, it is assigned by default to root:root.
It's the fact that WD500-NOA is owned by uqbar:uqbar which is strange.
For a FAT32 or NTFS file system which have no Unix user linked, a pair or user:group is assigned when mount. Usually it's the user which has current desktop. That means if you log as Smith, you mount the disk, you close session and log as Dupont, you will not have access to disk!

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