Thanks james, excuse the delay as i was out :-) James Wilkinson <james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > So root can write, but normal users can't? Or can normal users not even > read it? root can read but users cant access files in winXP c:/d:/e: partition drives (maybe permissions are not set) and what is the procedure to do that ? > It's "safe" as in support for vfat is very good, so you're not going to > lose data to a filesystem bug. [1] It's good practice not to use root > more often than necessary, so you may want to give normal users *more* > access: investigate the dmask and fmask options in man mount and man > fstab. > i did try that and this is the result : [rudra@localhost rudra]$ dmask bash: dmask: command not found [rudra@localhost rudra]$ fmask bash: fmask: command not found [rudra@localhost rudra]$ fstab bash: fstab: command not found > (Unlike "real" Unix-like filesystems, vfat has no support for user ids > and very little support for permissions. Under Linux, you'll find that > all files on a vfat partition have the same permissions. This is good > for your purposes: if one file is safe, then they all are). > You might want to set up a group for accessing the vfat partition: put > your normal user account in it, so it can read and write, and leave your > development user account out, so it can't write to the partition. > I don't know if you know how to read ls -l output: take a look at >http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Unix-and-Internet-Fundamentals-HOWTO/disk-layout.html#permissions thanks, i will look into it and reply when i return on 15-feb. > Just make sure that it is a different user with a different user ID: > that's automatic, and the rest of the security is automatic, too. Unix i did notice that and used some GUI apps to set permissions, but had a bad experience so gave it up. CLI dependence is tough for a non-programmer partly due to the few resources available. > To be paranoid, you might want to run > find ~ -type d -o -type f -perm -2 -ls > to check that there are no world-writable files in your home directory. it did not produce any error [rudra@localhost rudra]$ find ~ -type d -o -type f -perm -2 -ls [rudra@localhost rudra]$ btw, where can i find a list of commands like the above with explanations. Programming/Unix Books are more helpful for programmers. As a non-programmer (with time-constraints) i would still like resources which have some basic commands for simple tasks and give pointers to construct such commands on my own. The *man* files list various options but pls understand that it does not say what will go wrong if used incorrectly and in what combination.... That is very risky as i will have to spend *more* time undoing it. Thanks again, -- MR
