[PLUG] Reality collides with Linux worldview

[Richard Owlett]

On 04/11/2017 01:13 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 04/11/2017 12:30 PM, Paul Mullen wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 11:02:37AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
>>> Can fstab cause the partition's owner to 'universal' of group 'universe'?
>>> NOTE BENE: spelling of 'universal'/'universe' intentional.
>>>
>>> The intention being that *all* users would *AUTOmagically* be members of
>>> group 'universe'. Would require attention to creating same gid
>>> automatically.
>>
>> FAT-based file systems have no concept of file ownership.  The Linux
>> msdos and vfat file systems provide the ability to set static values
>> for user, group, and permissions, though.  The "umask" option in your
>> fstab entry is one of them.
>>
>> You can specify the owning user and group by adding the "uid" and
>> "gid" options.  If left unset, they default to the user that mounts
>> the partition (root, in your case).  Note that the value assigned to
>> these options are the user's and group's numeric identifiers, not
>> their names (e.g., "uid=1000").
>>
>> You can also specify permission mode masks separately for files and
>> directories, which will eliminate your difficulty with file creation
>> and deletion.  (A user must have execute permission for a directory
>> before he can add to or delete from it.)  Adding "dmask=022"
>> (resulting in a directory mode of 0755) and "umask=133" (resulting in
>> a file mode of 0644) should suffice.
>>
>> So try changing your fstab entry to this:
>>
>>   UUID=E90C-65B4  /media/common vfat auto,exec,rw,flush,uid=YOUR_UID_HERE,gid=YOUR_GID_HERE,dmask=022,fmask=133  0 0

Based on the man page for mount saying:

uid=value and gid=value
     Set the owner and group of all files. (Default: the uid and gid of 
the current process.)

I experimentally deleted "uid=YOUR_UID_HERE,gid=YOUR_GID_HERE,".
I got something closer to my mental image of how things should work.
It required the partition be manually mounted.
That resulted with the existing files on the partition being "owned" by 
the user triggering the mount - a near ideal situation.
HOWEVER :<
I managed to lose that configuration - I THOUGHT I'd saved all my 
iterations.
I'll try again tomorrow morning. Right now I've got myself going in 
non-productive circles.


>
> That worked.
> It raised some questions that I'll have to experiment with.
> Can't just now as I'm leaving for an appointment.
>
>>
>> It's probably safe to remove the "exec" and "flush" options, unless
>> you have specific reasons to include them.
>
> I don't recall why I included exec.
> However flush was explicitly recommended in a "HOWTO" I saw somewhere.
> It specifically aimed at uses with vfat.
>
>>  The mount manpage has all
>> of the details on the various options.  Search for "Mount options for
>> fat" and "Mount options for vfat".
>>
>>
>
> More later.
> Thanks.
>