External Hardrive - Sharing with other users on the same computer

**eric_1982** · January 17th, 2010

I am having issues with sharing an external hard drive with other users on a computer. For example if I reboot and login with user A and then logout and login with user B, I am not able to mount the external hard drive. If I reboot and login with user B first, I can then access the external hard drive with user B but not user A. Is there a way that both users can use the drive without having to reboot every time?

I am assuming this is some sort of security issue. If I login with the second user and go to /mnt/external harddrive I get a permission error."You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "External Drive"." If I login with the first user and try to set the permission it doesn't give me the ability?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

**Leppie** · January 17th, 2010

i think you might have forgotten to unmount the drive before logging off.

**eric_1982** · January 17th, 2010

I completly over look that. That seems to fix the issue. Is there a way that I can have a script run at logout to unmount that device?

**Leppie** · January 17th, 2010

you could add a line to your etc/gdm/PostSession/Default, something like this:

Code:

umount /mnt/External\ Drive

this should execute the command at every log off

**eric_1982** · January 18th, 2010

Thank you so much! I made the change in that file and it worked perfectly. Thanks again!

**johnnynb** · January 18th, 2010

Why not just mount it and as root change the permissions on
the mount point to allow all uses to access the drive

mount /mnt/disk /dev/sdxx etc
su to root
chmod 777 /mnt/disk