Desktop presentation of partitions

[T J Tulley]

My PC includes 3 hdds with about 10 partitions - in the Cassandra desktop when I open their Properties some of the partitions appear as mine, with permission to read and write, while others apparently are "owned" by root and I can't edit them. They all contain data which I created, except those with Linux installations. Even those contain stuff which I put there.

Some are described as "Desktop configuration file" and quote a link to a partition location which I can't easily identify with an hdd - I have to infer from the data - while others are described as "folders" and these clearly identify the drive on which they reside, giving its model and serial identities.

In particular, "sdb2" is a folder which is clearly partition 2 on the primary master IDE - it contains Bianca and is owned by root. Why is this not identified as sda2? sdb2 is given as its mount point.

The Windows partition on the same disk is shown as sda1, a desktop configuration file, and is owned by me. It won't boot, but the data there are very important, although most are backed up in other partitions - mainly as drive images. This was itself originally a drive image, and it used to boot.

I shall be most grateful for an explanation of how such a puzzling display has arisen, and especially how I can access and edit my data in those partitions where I am at present not permitted to do so.

Also, please, where can I find a clear explanation of "Mount points" and the general significance of "mounting"?


Yours hopefully, -



Theo Tulley.

[scorp123]

Also, please, where can I find a clear explanation of "Mount points" and the general significance of "mounting"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system#File_systems_under_Unix_and_Linux_systems
http://linux.die.net/man/8/mount

Hope this helps.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks, Scorp123 for the 4 urls to wiki articles - interesting and helpful, but difficult to take in quickly.

I have desktop configuration files which are "mine" and I have access, read and write permissions. It appears to me that although these are called files, they are really folders. Generally they represent partitions.

I open one of these and select a folder, and then create a link. The link shows that its owner is root and I can't obtain permissions to edit its files.

How do I create a link which will retain the permissions of the parent folder? It appears that perhaps this is related to the process of Mounting?

Other desktop configuration files also representing partitions are "owned" by root. Can I change their ownership?

I shall be grateful for help and advice.

Yours hopefully,
Theo Tulley.

[scorp123]

The link shows that its owner is root and I can't obtain permissions to edit its files.

You usually don't have to edit a link ... because a link will usually carry you to whatever it is it links to, so editing a link is not something you're supposed to do. You create or delete links, that's it. If you try to "edit" a link you will most likely edit the file or location it is pointing to.

How do I create a link which will retain the permissions of the parent folder?

That should be standard. So if the link that you created all of a sudden has root's permissions than you were most likely 'root' when you created it. I just tried this here and all links created by my normal user account belong to me and not 'root'.

Other desktop configuration files also representing partitions are "owned" by root. Can I change their ownership?

I am not really sure what you want here. Things like /usr, /opt, /boot, /var and so on absolutely have to belong to 'root' or things will go terribly wrong. As for other mount points (e.g. for USB sticks?) that's something the hotplug & auto-mount sub-system should take care of.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks. Scorp 123 for your 2 replies.

To return to this topic - I would like to edit links to the extent of renaming them so that the visible desktop becomes more immediately intelligible. The ones I mentioned are all to partitions on my HDDs, and I don't understand why some are "mine" and some are "root's" - all, I think, created during setup.

I have tried editing properties of links - they can of course be directed to different targets which may or may not be found. I have in the past similarly edited Windows shortcuts. But as you say, links work quite differently.

Why do some links show Drive among the tabs in Properties, while other don't? If present, it gives a clear identity for the HDD containing the partition.

Links which I created have sometimes become broken for no apparent reason.

With many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
Theo Tulley.

[silentstone]

The ones I mentioned are all to partitions on my HDDs, and I don't understand why some are "mine" and some are "root's" - all, I think, created during setup.

Possibly, some partitions are being handled with /etc/fstab and some others with udev. Perhaps you can post your /etc/fstab file? Also, can you post the list of files in your Desktop folder?

Code: Select all

ls -al ~/Desktop

should do it.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks, Silentstone:

Here is etc/fstab: I don't pretend to understand it!

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sdc1
UUID=77f4c4f4-5fc1-4145-b303-7e2b1c4986c6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=06E4035FE403507B /media/sdb1 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdb2
UUID=dc498901-7b89-4c4b-acd3-ef66ef9ada9e /media/sdb2 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sdc2
UUID=06E4035FE403507B /media/sdc2 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdc3
UUID=06E4035FE403507B /media/sdc3 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdd1
UUID=06E4035FE403507B /media/sdd1 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdd2
UUID=5238E47B38E46009 /media/sdd2 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdd3
UUID=340C0C6F0C0C2E84 /media/sdd3 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdd5
UUID=FC38505C385017CA /media/sdd5 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sdd6
UUID=95b08208-b10a-4c9c-b498-9ca90b5391dd /media/sdd6 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sdd8
UUID=b6bf8806-7750-42c1-860f-456aee06cc58 /media/sdd8 ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sdb5
UUID=d7b28ea8-f15d-470a-ab37-d8df129154d2 none swap sw 0 0
# /dev/sdc5
UUID=d0922872-1e6b-4193-9415-2274f8e4a247 none swap sw 0 0
# /dev/sdd7
UUID=7d599fc9-bd05-48bd-87f4-86bbef5ce97e none swap sw 0 0
# /dev/sdd9
UUID=362c7b45-ee3e-497b-b7ec-01135939d5aa none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd1 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Here are the files currently on my desktop - Sig.files & Sundry.txt appear twice because they are links which I have currently opened. But Firefox & Thunderbird should also appear twice but they don't - they have links and are open.

I don't understand the character-strings at the beginning of each line. Can you help?

theo@TJT4LxCassandra:~$ ls -al ~/Desktop
total 68
drwxrwxr-x 2 theo theo 4096 2007-08-31 12:19 .
drwxrwxr-x 37 theo theo 4096 2007-08-31 15:14 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 theo theo 56 2007-08-17 19:02 Link to 0_Sig.files -> /home/theo/Documents/Theo Tulley's Documents/0_Sig.files
-rw-r--r-- 1 theo theo 194 2007-08-31 12:19 mintDisk_sda1.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 theo theo 206 2007-08-31 13:41 mintDisk_sdb3.desktop
-rwxrwxrwx 1 theo theo 18207 2007-08-20 18:25 Sundry.txt
-rw-rw-rw- 1 theo theo 18207 2007-08-20 18:25 Sundry.txt~
-rwxrw---- 1 theo theo 2363 2007-08-17 17:56 -usr-share-applications-firefox.desktop
-rwxrw---- 1 theo theo 1592 2007-08-18 20:14 -usr-share-applications-gnome-cups-manager.desktop
-rwxrw---- 1 theo theo 759 2007-08-16 22:50 -usr-share-applications-mozilla-thunderbird.desktop
theo@TJT4LxCassandra:~$

J hope this helps you to help me - & possibly others.


Yours hopefully, -



Theo Tulley.

[scorp123]

I don't understand the character-strings at the beginning of each line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system_permissions#Symbolic_notation