[SOLVED] Permissions for standard users to access a folder

[whatsforbreakfast]

I have two accounts setup on my Mint install, one admin (Jimmy) and one standard user (Squishy).

My computer has two drives configured like this

SSD: Primary - Partitioned in half, one NTFS (Windows 10) and the other ext4 (Mint)
HDD: Secondary - NTFS, used to store documents and files that sort of thing. It's labelled as Fatty

I would like Squishy to have access to one particular folder and it's contents located on the secondary HDD

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/Fatty/Files

For me on my admin account I can see the secondary drive just fine, as well as read and write to it as you would expect. However on the standard account this is not the case. The drive is visible in the file manager, however trying to access it returns this error

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Could not display "/media/jimmy/Fatty".
The location is not a folder.

I don't want to change the Squishy account to an admin account because the password is incredibly weak and would create a major security vulnerability in my mind, and I don't want to format the drive to ext4 because I need access to it in Windows 10 too.

Would it being mounted in /media/Jimmy have something to do with it?

I dug around in permissions but they didn't really make sense to me. Figure I'm missing something really simple here lol, any help appreciated!

[philotux]

You could try mounting it under /media/Fatty instead and add,users,rw to the /etc/fstab line and see if it will make any difference.
First unmont Fatty using your file manager: right-click:unmount.
Then make a new mount point under/media:

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sudo mkdir /media/Fatty

and then make the changes in the fstab.
Next run

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sudo mount -a

to mount it at it's new location. Log in to Squishy and see if you have access to Fatty now.

[whatsforbreakfast]

Thanks! I'm not sure I've followed these directions correctly but I'll try and explain what I did, because I've bumped up against an error.

So I unmounted Fatty in Nemo by right clicking on it and selecting unmount

Then I made the new mount point using

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sudo mkdir /media/Fatty

Which I can see reflected in Nemo when I navigate there

Then I opened up the fstab in text editor with root privelages, and added

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,users,rw

to the bottom like this https://imgur.com/55KcpMu

I suspect my problem is there ^

Because when I go to try

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sudo mount -a

I get this error

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mount: /etc/fstab: parse error at line 13 -- ignored

What do?

[philotux]

My bad! You would need a whole line in fstab in order to auto-mount Fatty under /media. Sorry!

Please post the output from

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lsblk -f

[whatsforbreakfast]

My bad! You would need a whole line in fstab in order to auto-mount Fatty under /media. Sorry!

Please post the output from

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lsblk -f

All good man Here you go

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NAME   FSTYPE LABEL UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                      
├─sda1 vfat         F646-93C2                            /boot/efi
├─sda2 vfat         B2BC-31BF                            
├─sda3                                                   
├─sda4 ntfs         FE1004101003CF19                     
└─sda5 ext4         efb218a8-a585-4b91-bdd4-7dfaa0dc614d /
sdb                                                      
├─sdb1                                                   
└─sdb2 ntfs   Fatty FC5E39D75E398C00                     /media/jimmy/Fatty

[philotux]

Alright, let's do this

Unmount Fatty again using your file manager.

Edit your /etc/fstab with root privilege. Delete ,users,rw at the bottom.

Add the follwing lines instead (copy/paste):

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# Fatty mounted under /media/Fatty
UUID=FC5E39D75E398C00   /media/Fatty ntfs-3g defaults,user,rw 0 0

Save and close the file.
Cross your fingers (optional)

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sudo mount -a

If no error messages, log out from the current account an log in to Squishy. Hopefully you will have access to Fatty from there.

[whatsforbreakfast]

You sir are a legend. It works! Can't thank you enough man

[philotux]

You are so welcome! And thank you, you made my Saturday!
Have a nice weekend!

"philotux"

[whatsforbreakfast]

Haha and you mine! Have a great weekend too bud.

Love this community