mounting external usb drives: solved

[Gerhard Magnus]

On Sun, 2008-08-03 at 22:49 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Gerhard Magnus wrote:
> > The setup I had for my 2 external usb hard drives that worked in FC8
> > seems to be restricting use of these drives to root in FC9.
> > 
> > I added the directories /mnt/usb_232GB and /mnt/usb_93B and altered the
> > fstab to include these lines:
> > 
> > /dev/sdd1               /mnt/usb_232GB          auto    user,auto   0 0
> > /dev/sde1               /mnt/usb_93GB           auto    user,auto   0 0
> > 
> > Both drives have been formatted as ext3. I can access both but can't
> > write to them except as root. How can I make them write-accessible to
> > all users?
> > 
> You have to set the permissions *after* the USB is mounted, then change 
> the directory mode to 777, or for some tiny bit of sanity 1777:
>    chmod 1777 /mnt/usb_93GB
> 
> Now, having given you that, I *strongly* suggest that you change fstab 
> to use the UUID of the filesystem. That makes it work if you only plug 
> in one, if you plug them in the wrong ports, if FC10 probes the USB bus 
> ass-backwards from FC9, or other ways you can shoot yourself in the foot.
> 
> Redhat 8 (or maybe 9) would occasionally install on a system with two 
> SCSI controllers and probe them in one order for install and the other 
> for runtime boot, which changes all the device names. It took me two 
> hours to find and fix that, in the "pre-UUID" days. Late on a Friday. 
> With a 131 mile drive to get home. With something as easy to change as 
> pluggable devices, I suggest you avoid this learning experience.

Everything works. The good news I wasn't expecting is that the
filesystems keep their permissions through the unmounting/mounting of a
reboot. In case anyone wonders, the extra "1" in "chmod 1777" blocks
users (other than root) from deleting the folder or changing its
permissions.