up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I have a new external disk and just made an ext3 partition on it. I'm wondering what's the best way to set permissions on it (so that it's rw for certain users). I guess I could chmod ... /dev/sdb1 but I was thinking of a more dynamic way (kind of like uid= and gid= options for vfat and such).

link|improve this question
46% accept rate
there are no uid= or gid= mount options for ext3. you'd configure permissions like you would for any other shared directory on the system -- make it owned by one group, and add all users to that group, or chmod the whole disk to 777, or use ACLs, or some other solution. – quack quixote Mar 19 '10 at 17:46
the trouble comes when you move this external ext3 drive to another system; if users/UIDs/groups/GIDs aren't synced across the two systems, you could end up with trouble -- files are owned by UIDs and GIDS, not users and groups. this is what makes ext3 troublesome for external disks. – quack quixote Mar 19 '10 at 17:47
Thanks for the info, this would've been perfectly fine as an answer btw. – Matteo Riva Mar 19 '10 at 19:33
feedback

Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.