8.04->10.04 Lost write access to shared volume

[rkaras]

Computer: Dell Latitude D600
- Ram: 1 GB
- HD: Hitachi ATA HTS541680J9AT00
- OS: Win XP Pro & Ubuntu 10.04 (Kernel
- Volumes:
/dev/sda1 25GB FAT(32) mount: /media/sda1
/dev/sda2 17GB ext3 mount: /
/dev/sda3 17GB ext3 mount: /home
/dev/sda5 2.1GB Swap
/dev/sda6 19GB FAT(32) mount: /windows also mounted at /media
- OS: win XP pro 32 & Ubuntu 10.04

Upgraded from 8.04 to 10.04 and ran Update Manager. After this, sda6, the shared volume where I keep my documents, is read/write accessible from Windows, but read-only accessible from Ubuntu.

I've tried chmod and chown, but in each case, changes to permissions or group are prohibited. So is copying of files to the shared volume, and modifying files (e.g., via OpenOffice).

Additional info: Ubuntu takes a long time to boot after GRUB and during the splash, with the disk drive activity light on continuously.

Any ideas? Could this be an AppArmor problem?

Many thanks!

[tom4everitt]

Its probably just something wrong in your /etc/fstab file.

Either post the output of

cat /etc/fstab

and we can help you, or help yourself with for example this guide:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131

Good luck!

EDIT: This guide might be a bit more comprehensible actually http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

[rkaras]

Thanks! Should have done that in the first place:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda2
UUID=80133ac3-dc99-47f7-8171-3defa79dd1e0 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda3
UUID=507c8cd5-7909-454e-b9f2-e82050ca5236 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
UUID=1CBA-FCF6 /media/sda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda6
UUID=46F9-6384 /windows vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=287ee259-400c-469c-ad4e-96648f31ecef none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda6 /media/os-share vfat users,auto 0 0

[tom4everitt]

The last line concerns the mounting of sda6 as you can see. It needs an option to make it mount read-write. Try making it

/dev/sda6 /media/os-share vfat users,auto,umask=000 0 0

instead. (I'm not an expert of fstab, so I could be wrong.)

[rkaras]

You steered me in the right direction! Adding umask=oooo worked, but it felt a bit uncomfortable giving full access to "others". I experimented and found that by assigning a gid=46 (corresponds to "plugdev"), and setting umask=0007, the shared volume worked as I wanted.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda2
UUID=80133ac3-dc99-47f7-8171-3defa79dd1e0 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda3
UUID=507c8cd5-7909-454e-b9f2-e82050ca5236 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
UUID=1CBA-FCF6 /media/sda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda6
UUID=46F9-6384 /windows vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=287ee259-400c-469c-ad4e-96648f31ecef none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda6 /media/os-share vfat users,auto,umask=0007,gid=46 0 0

Your help was a godsend - I would have wandered around in the jungle forever without it. Thanks!

[tom4everitt]

Happy it worked!