Changing permissions on an external hard disk

[pandaberserk]

Hi, I have an external hard disk that, when I plug in, says its owner is root, which is fine by me. Except the only user who can view & modify content is owner, and seeing as I'm not the owner I can't modify permissions. Can somebody help? (I know it's probably easy to get root privileges, but I'm not very good at command lines)

[jpc2769]

Re: Changing permissions on an external hard disk

I am having the exact same problem, running Intrepid. Anyone out there know how to fix this?

Thanks

[toad]

Re: Changing permissions on an external hard disk

There are (in true Linux fashion) a number of ways to do this.

To find out the best one for you please tell us both how you want to use this external drive. Is it attached to the box on a permanent basis? Do you unplug it frequently? Where do you want it mounted/appear in your directory tree?

Also, if you are not scared of mounting itself but shy away from the command line you may want to consider installing mountmanager.

[jpc2769]

Re: Changing permissions on an external hard disk

I unplug the drive frequently, I don't care where it appears in the directory tree as long as it is consistent.

[toad]

Re: Changing permissions on an external hard disk

Again, this goes for both of you

How is the drive formated? Could you plug it in, run the following commands and post the output please.

dmesg|tail
mount

Could you also, on the command line, cd into the directory into which removable devices are mounted and in particular your removable device (usually /media) and post the output of

ls -la

Finally, please let us have a copy of your fstab file (located in /etc/fstab).