Automounted External Drive Owned By Root

[tinker123]

I have an external, USB, SSD hard drive in the EXT4 file system.

When I plug it into my computer Mint has it as owned by root.

How do I get Mint/Cinnamon to automount USB drives with myself as the owner?

[mikeflan]

Hi Tinker.
The person who answers this (probably not me) will want the output of each of these commands:

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blkid
df -Th
cat /etc/fstab

Plug in the drive before running those commands.

Also run this command to backup fstab. There will be no response if it works.

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sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

[tinker123]

Hi Tinker.
The person who answers this (probably not me) will want the output of each of these commands:

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blkid
df -Th
cat /etc/fstab

Fair enough!


The last line is odd as I formatted the drive ( via the file manager ) this morning to be ext4 and changed the label to something else.

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Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="5FkZP2-Ktpo-UBJ6-xjpo-vIBW-kl5E-5pBcKr" TYPE="LVM2_member" PARTUUID="7c398459-01"
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-root: UUID="2b8f311f-04ff-4a08-a236-7804a18ad5cb" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-swap_1: UUID="29291e62-cd4b-4bfb-a757-22f02f84052b" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL_FATBOOT="FAT32USBSTK" LABEL="FAT32USBSTK" UUID="84CE-0298" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="837e3546-01"
Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7>

...

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Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> df -Th
Filesystem                Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                      devtmpfs  7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs                     tmpfs     1.6G  1.6M  1.6G   1% /run
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-root ext4      213G  136G   67G  68% /
tmpfs                     tmpfs     7.8G  172K  7.8G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                     tmpfs     5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs                     tmpfs     7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                     tmpfs     1.6G   28K  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb1                 ext4      916G   77M  870G   1% /mnt/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1
Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> 

...

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Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-root /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-swap_1 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 /mnt/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> 

[mikeflan]

Like I say - I'm not the one to fix this.
I see this page:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/769460/ ... ly-as-root
but I don't know what to do.

[AndyMH]

Try adding sdd2 to fstab with the same options as sdd1, e.g.

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/dev/sdd2 /media/intel/somewhere_else auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,noauto,x-gvfs-show 0 0

personally I prefer to specify the filesystem and identify it by UUID not device reference

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#mount point for HDD in ultrabay
UUID=5cdf25ee-93ed-41a0-96f5-31ff2f85862c	/media/ultrabay	ext4	defaults,nofail	0	2

works for me (above asks for pwd to unmount which is okay by me, if you want to allow user unmount then put users in the options).

[tinker123]

To clarify, what I am talking about I am referring to the feature that when you plug a USB drive into the computer, Mint will mount it for you, without you having to do anything.

When I do this with my USB hard drive, in the EXT file system, it gets mounted as root rather than as me.

Below is a copy of my fstab.

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Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-root / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/mapper/mint--vg-swap_1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 /mnt/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
Mint20UlyanaCinnamon4.6.7> [/quote]

Was the 3rd line created by Mint to mount whatever is plugged in?

People have mentioned adding UID into the options to mount EXT4 file systems as myself rather than root.

I tried that, but only made it so I couldn't mount the drive at all

[quote]/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 /mnt/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 auto uid=1000,gid=1000,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

Would someone care to post a full example of that line or another line that will make mint mount USB drives for me, and mount it as me rather than root, even EXT4 file systems?

[AndyMH]

I note that you are using encryption.

The reason is that you have it mounting as root is that it is mounting in /mnt, which is owned by root. Don't like disks for various reasons, one being that it creates messy entries in fstab:

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/dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 /mnt/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

compare to:

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#mount point for HDD in ultrabay
UUID=5cdf25ee-93ed-41a0-96f5-31ff2f85862c	/media/ultrabay	ext4	defaults,nofail	0	2

which mounts an ext4 partition on an external drive in /media/ultrabay. I assume from what you've said that the partition you are talking about is ext4. If ntfs the options are slightly different.

You have choices:

• remove the fstab entry and udisks will mount it automatically when you plug it in at /media/you/labelname or /media/you/UUID. Good practice to assign a label to a partition, much more user friendly than using the UUID.

• change the fstab entry. You can mount it wherever you like, but if you mount it outside home or /media/you it will be owned by root. If you do that, with the drive plugged in:

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sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /wherever_you_mounted_it

that will change ownership back to you.

You get the UUID by running blkid in a terminal. Don't try to retype, copy/paste. You need to edit fstab as root.

[altair4]

Still confused:

blkid says this:

/dev/sdb1: LABEL_FATBOOT="FAT32USBSTK" LABEL="FAT32USBSTK" UUID="84CE-0298" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="837e3546-01"

df -Th says this:

/dev/sdb1 ext4 916G 77M 870G 1% /mnt/wwn-0x5000c500450f95eb-part1

Could you please run blkid again this way:

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sudo blkid -c /dev/null

[tinker123]

remove the fstab entry and udisks will mount it automatically when you plug it in at /media/you/labelname or /media/you/UUID. Good practice to assign a label to a partition, much more user friendly than using the UUID.

That worked!

I commented out that line in my /etc/fstab and now it all works smoothly.

Thank you.

[karlchen]

<mod>
Questions by jvaes and replies to jvaes split off from this thread and turned into a dedicated thread here: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=344921.
Thread hijacking is not appreciated and it is counter-productive.
</mod>