change permissions on ext3 external hard drive

[pythonscript]

I just bought a 1 TB WD external hard drive, and because I'm going to be using it exclusively with my Linux systems, I formatted it as ext3. However, I can't write to it. I don't want it mounted automatically, because I'm using it as a removable usb drive.

It mounts automatically, but I can only write to it as root. How can I change its file permissions to allow all users to write to it? I don't want to have to use "gksudo nautilus" every time; that's a pain and a security risk I don't want to make. Thanks!

[skatinjj]

this is about the file fstab which you can use to do what you want

this is an article all about permissons

[pythonscript]

this is about the file fstab which you can use to do what you want

Will /etc/fstab allow me to automatically mount the drive for all users but not at boot time? This drive will never be attached to my computer at boot, and according to the first article

Filesystems that are described in /etc/fstab are typically mounted when the computer is booted...

[Diabolis]

No worries, if you have a fstab entry and the HD is not connected it will just pass it and keep going through the other lines. However, you can add the noauto option to the entry so it won't try to mount the drive at boot up.

[pythonscript]

I added this to /etc/fstab

UUID="d1afc604-9bc4-4aa5-a085-27a2367b350c /media/MyBook noauto,rw,user,relatime    0    2

but when I insert the drive, I still can only write to it as sudo. How can I change this? I can't run gksudo nautilus every time I want to write to the device. Thanks!

[pythonscript]

Can anyone help me with this?! I'm desperate to get this working so I can actually back up data to this drive! I changed my /etc/fstab to this:

UUID="d1afc604-9bc4-4aa5-a085-27a2367b350c /media/MyBook ext3 auto,rw,user,relatime 0 2

I didn't want to use auto, because the drive won't be attached to my computer on boot, but I really need help getting this to work! I have an external NTFS hard drive that works fine, without any /etc/fstab configuration. I would have thought the Linux file system would work better with Linux than the Microsoft file system.

When I execute

sudo mount -a

I get the error message

mount: special device UUID="d1afc604-9bc4-4aa5-a085-27a2367b350c does not exist

I'd really appreciate any help! I need to get this working!

[Diabolis]

but when I insert the drive, I still can only write to it as sudo. How can I change this? I can't run gksudo nautilus every time I want to write to the device. Thanks!

You have to change the permissions of the mount point, /media/MyBook, with the chmod command.

If its not going to be always attached, then don't write a fstab entry. Just plug and unplug as if it were a small USB flash drive and it should be auto-detected and auto-mounted.

[pythonscript]

You have to change the permissions of the mount point, /media/MyBook, with the chmod command.

If its not going to be always attached, then don't write a fstab entry. Just plug and unplug as if it were a small USB flash drive and it should be auto-detected and auto-mounted.

Ok, I ran

sudo chmod 777 /media/MyBook/

but now when I insert the drive, it doesn't even show up on the desktop. What's happening here? Did I apply the wrong permissions?

[pythonscript]

The drive won't mount automatically in ubuntu anymore! Can anyone please tell me how I can fix this?

[Diabolis]

List the contents of the foler like this:

ls -l /media/MyBook

To verify that is not mounted and that the permissions are right.