20.04 exFAT support - issues?

**exharris** · July 3rd, 2020

Recently installed Ubuntu Server 20.04.

I have 2 internal HDDs in this PC that were formatted in exFAT under Windows 10 before I wiped the PC to install Ubuntu Server.

I used exFAT in case I ever need to move these internal drives back to a Windows machine (or, indeed, wipe the OS on this machine and install Windows instead).

I did not want to use a file system that Windows would not recognise (in hindsight, I perhaps wish I had used NTFS! but it is what it is!)

My fstab rows for these are below

Code:

#INT-1TB-4K Internal HDD mount to /mnt/INT-1TB-4K
UUID=0E7E-6579 /mnt/INT-1TB-4K exfat defaults, permissions 0 0

#INT-1TB-BAK Internal HDD mount to /mnt/INT-1TB-BAK
UUID=3037-96B0 /mnt/INT-1TB-BAK exfat defaults, permissions 0 0

I have not installed any special exfat packages and understood kernel level support in 20.04 for exFAT.

/mnt ls-all gives

Code:

exharris@plexserv:/mnt$ ls -all
total 520
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root   4096 Jul  2 09:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root   4096 Jul  2 05:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x  9 root root 262144 Jul  3 03:49 INT-1TB-4K
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 262144 Jul  3 03:49 INT-1TB-BAK

I get permission denied errors in the terminal when trying to create files in these folders (unless I use 'sudo', of course). This is because the 'others' write bit is set to -.

When running sudo chmod -R 777 INT-1TB-4K from /mnt, I get no errors, but when doing ls -all again, nothing has changed.

This is causing me problems also as I have set these up as Samba shares and also cannot write to them from other machines.

I also tried sudo chmod -R o+w INT-1TB-4K - same thing happened.

man mount shows no info on exFAT at all.

Is this problem with chmod because the exFAR kernel level implementation at this stage is not properly implemented or am I doing something wrong?

**dino99** · July 3rd, 2020

to work with exfat, do:

sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

**HermanAB** · July 3rd, 2020

ExFAT doesn't provide the security and authentication fatures that a UNIX system needs. Reformatting a disk is trivial and can be done with a Linux boot disc. So rather spare yourself the hassle and install Linux properly with a real file system.

**deadflowr** · July 3rd, 2020

I'm not sure what permissions is but the options in fstab need to be continuous without spaces.
(Should be defaults,permissions instead of default, permissions)