Operation (by root) not permitted

[Alan Dayley]

You are attempting to change "Linux style" group settings on files in
a vfat file system.  That will not work.  The vfat file system does
not have a way to set or change group ownership.

The error message is not worded very well.  It should say something
like "Cannot set group ownership in vfat (FAT32) file system"

Alan

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 9:52 PM, ChasM Marshall <chasm750 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>   Hiya,
>
>   Okay, I'm baffled.  What in the Ubuntu 9.07 is going on here?
>
> # uname -a
> Linux BlueBeast.localhost 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17
> 01:57:59 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
>
>  Logged in as root I've edited /etc/fstab.
> I want the /Meta vfat partition completely open (unlocked).
>
> # cat /etc/fstab
>  # /Meta was /dev/sda5
>  UUID=45F2-140B  /Meta     vfat    utf8,users,noauto   0       1
>
> # mount
>  /dev/sda5 on /Meta type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,utf8)
>
> # cat /etc/mtab
>  /dev/sda5 /Meta vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,utf8 0 0
>
> # ls -al
>  drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4096 1969-12-31 17:00 Meta
>
> # chgrp -hR users /Meta
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/Linux/TextTest.txt': Operation not
> permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/Linux': Operation not permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/TextTest.txt': Operation not permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/FireFoxMint.jpg': Operation not permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/FireFoxFedora.jpeg': Operation not
> permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/FireFoxSuSE.jpg': Operation not permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-190.53-pkg1.run':
> Operation not permitted
>  chgrp: changing group of `/Meta': Operation not permitted
>
>  I can not figure out what in Ubuntu (Mint 7) stops root (#) from assigning
> permissions here.
> Can you?
>  This vfat partition was created in SuSE 9.3 and used mkdosfs to create the
> file system.
> /Meta is a common mount point (folder?) for multiple of my Linux distros.
> But it's getting harder to use.
> As root, it functions okay (mostly) as a common data folder.  I want to give
> access to all users
> of any current-booted Linux.  In SuSE 10.3 the process required a new
> /etc/fstab entry followed
> by the chgrp command as above.  But in Ubuntu, I'm a bit lost.
> Here I can see a disagreement between /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab that I can't
> reconcile.
>
>   It may be a while before I can return to the PLUG mail list.  So be
> patient with me.
>
>   (-:  Chas.M.  :-)
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