[PLUG] Vfat USB drive mounts read-only

[Dale Snell]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:48:12 -0800
John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:

> Now that I am running with 11.1 I stuck in the offending USB drive.
> Nautilus popped up a window displaying the contents, but every single
> item had a padlock on it. From the command line "ls -la" shows that
> every single item on the drive is owned by jjj (that's me!) of the
> group root (not me!).

I don't think you need to worry about the group ID.  The vfat filesystem
has no concept of "group," so Linux just wings it.  I'd be willing to
bet that all your files are marked as executable, too.  The fact that
you can't mount rw is much more worrying.  You might try

"sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/sd<whatever> /your/mount/point/here"

If that doesn't work, I suspect that your thumb drive has gotten
corrupted or is going bad.  Try copying everything off and
reformatting. If that doesn't work, you're probably stuck with buying a
new one.  :-(  Fortunately, they're not very expensive these days.  

> Sorry for the lack of linewrap. Sylpheed won't install on OpenSuse
> 11.1 and I had to install Claws Mail instead. I can't find the button
> for Linewrap.

That I can help you with, since I use Claws Mail.  :-)  From the main
Claws Mail window, open Configuration>Preferences... (NOT "Preferences
for current account").  Claws will pop up a new window with lots of
options.  In the left-hand pane, select Compose>Wrapping. There you'll
find all of your linewrapping options.  Also, in the main Edit menu,
you will find the "Wrap current paragraph" option (bound to <ctrl-l>).
I think you have to set the wrap column first, though.  I don't recall
what it defaults to, I'm afraid.

Hope this helps!

--Dale

--
Q:  What lies on the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A:  A nervous wreck.