access denied with an external USB hard drive

[Guest dasch]

Hi,

 

I'm working on this problem since one week now and this is driving me crazy :/

 

So, I've finally decided to cry for help Wink

 

Here is the problem:

 

I have an USB external drive of 250 Gb. There are 2 NTFS partitions on it. When I plug the USB in, Mandriva (2005 LE) recognizes it and automount it automatically Smile.

 

However when I try to access it (as a regular user) it says : permission denied. But I can access it without any problem when I'm root.

 

Here is the content of my /etc/fstab (generated automatically by Mandriva):

Code:

 

[...]

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/removable ntfs pamconsole,exec,noauto,utf8,iocharset=iso8859-1,managed 0 0

/dev/sdb2 /mnt/removable1 ntfs pamconsole,exec,noauto,utf8,iocharset=iso8859-1,managed 0 0

[...]

 

 

I know that I normally should modify the /etc/fstab file to allow regular users to access the drive (adding 'user' on the preceding lines). However that won't work (as a matter of fact I tried several times Sad) because this file is modified automatically by Mandriva.

 

Here are the many things I tried without any luck Sad

 

1. adding the 'user' param to the file /etc/fstab and then "freeze" it so that no one can modify it (using "chattr +i /etc/fstab" when being root).

That didn't work because at the next reboot, Mandriva don't automount the drive then. And as a side effect, I couldn't use my other usb keys when I did that.

 

2. changing the parameters of the drive using HardDrake. This one work temporarily but again at the next reboot Mandriva don't seem to remember the parameters and I have to do that each time.

 

3. I tried several other things (to long to mention it) and always without any success.

 

So, any help would be GREATLY accepted as I'm feeling a little depressed right now :'(

 

Thanks in advance,

dasch

[pmpatrick]

What security level are you running at? Open a console, su to root and run:

 

# draksec

 

That should open the draksec window. Try setting the security level to "Standard" and see if that helps. At the higher security levels, access to windows partitions is pretty limited by default.