Thank you for your response.

I had tried doing that but it will not let me either chmod or chown

Here are some of the responses I have been getting when trying this project. I will use the hda5 which is a FAT32 formatted partition on my primary hard drive. My intent for this partition was to provide a 2GB space to transfer Windoze files to the Linux side.

I mount this drive on bootup using this command:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat rw,auto,users 0 0

This is the listing I get from the /mnt directory:

[root@localhost mnt]# ls -alb
total 27
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Mar 28 15:18 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Jul 6 11:51 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 27 12:12 floppy
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 3072 Dec 31 1969 hda5

When I try to chmod I get this:

[root@localhost mnt]# chown koder:koder /mnt/hda5
chown: changing ownership of `/mnt/hda5': Operation not permitted
[root@localhost mnt]# chmod -c 4775 hda5
chmod: changing permissions of `hda5': Operation not permitted

And chown gives this:

[root@localhost mnt]# chown koder:koder /mnt/hda5
chown: changing ownership of `/mnt/hda5': Operation not permitted

Wondering if I might be working with some sort of link and not the true file I ran this command. I think that the number one in front of the hda5 indicated that it is its only link, although I do not know the significance of the other numbers.

[root@localhost mnt]# ls -i /mnt
7307278 floppy 1 hda5
[root@localhost mnt]# ls -i hda5
4821 Recycled 4822 TRS 2006 local BU

I mentioned the hda5 above instead of the sda1 and sda2 because I hoped the examples would be a little cleaner. The USB disks run through some sort of automount and generate icons on the Desktop that have to be mounted to use. Since the mount point is in /media there are a couple of things in the middle to muddy up the waters. I am hoping that once I get one sorted out the other will become clear.

If I use fstab mount the USB drives I get a 'failed ' on the list that displays while booting.
I get about the same thing if I do not specify vfat for hda5. They zip by fast enough I can't guarantee 'same'.

Matt Graham suggested that there may be an issue with passwords in relation to SELinux. The messages almost sound like that, but I know nothing about SELinux and how it interacts with the system.

He also suggested that I look at /dev/disk/by-label/ and /dev/disk/by-uuid. I found these folders, buy do not know what to do with them. The USB disk is mounting by label since the directions I found for formatting suggested that, but I do not understand the implications of having used that.

Should I fdisk the USB disks and format vfat?

Thank you for your time.

Harold

Dale Farnsworth wrote:

I want to be able to access my extra hard drive partitions as user so I 
can back things up, or whatever else I want to so. I am running a 
standalone workstation.

I have a partition on my primary hard drive. I have two partitions on a 
USB hard drive.
When I connect the USB, or boot with it connected I have an icon on the 
Desktop for each partition. I can as user mount the drives and then 
access the data on as read only. I can copy data from the mounted drive.

I can store files on the mounted drive as SuperUser and then delete 
them. I dismounted the drives and then as SU ran the following session:


[root@localhost ~]# mount -t ext3 -o uid=501,gid=501 /dev/sda1
/home/koder/Desktop/sda1
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | tail
ide: failed opcode was: 0xb0
hde: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hde: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
ide: failed opcode was: 0xb0
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on sda1, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
SELinux: initialized (dev sda1, type ext3), uses xattr
EXT3-fs: Unrecognized mount option "uid=501" or missing value


The ext3 fs doesn't support the uid option.  That option is needed
on filesystems, like FAT, that don't have the notion file ownership.

On ext3, if you want a user to be able to access individual files
and directories, you have to use the normal UNIX permission system.
To be able to create/remove files in/from a directory, make sure
that the directory is owned by the appropriate user and that the
user 'w' bit is set in the permissions.  Similarly set the permissions
in order to be able to update individual files.

-Dale