[Solved] How to switch from /media/UserName to just /media

[Tim44]

A couple of years ago, I had installed Linux Mint 11 in an ASUS laptop Intel i7 64 bit environment that dual boots to Windows 7 Professional, and have only now gotten around to upgrading to Mint 17 cinnamon.

In Mint 11, all my "external" files (for lack of a better name) could be found in "/media". For example "/media/Data_Files/ (etc.)" and "/media/LaCie-Backup/ (etc.)" Now, in Mint 17, they are appearing as "/media/tim/Data_Files/ (etc.)" and "/media/tim/LaCie-Backup/ (etc.)" In other words, my User ID has been inserted into all of the directory paths. (In case it's relevant, the "Data_Files" are NTFS so Windows 7 can access them in an emergency.)

What are the implications? For example, if I was to set up another User, such as "susan", would that mean the new User wouldn't be able to get to the "Data_Files" and the "LaCie-Backup" folders unless I did a "chmod" on everything, since the current security is "drwx------"

Essentially, my question is What do I have to do to drop the User (i.e. "tim") from the "/media" path, as it sure appears I'd be in for trouble, otherwise, when adding another User?

Thanks! Tim

[ofb]

Look into Users and Groups. I think what you actually want in Linux terms is to open Group permissions on those directories, and make sure the new users are members of your group.

[WharfRat]

Tim44,

What you are experiencing are changes to the way udisks mounts partitions.

The way around it is to create the mount points in /media and add an fstab entry for them. They will mount automatically. If you don't want that you can add the noauto option to mount them manually.

[Tim44]

WharfRat, you appear to have the sense of my question... First, am I understanding your comment about udisks to mean that the Ubuntu / Mint folks have taken a new approach since Mint 11, and that "UserName" has become a required entry in the the directory pathways? If so, then on to Question 2: Can you give this relatively inexperienced fellow some guidance (or a link) about how to create mount points and how to modify the "fstab" file?

Thank you, Tim

[WharfRat]

Yep, you can place the blame squarely on the ubuntu developers.

This is what you have to do. I'm using /media/win7 as the mountpoint and for the fstab entry since you said your files are an a NTFS partition.

In the terminal:

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sudo mkdir /media/win7

Get the UUID of the partition with

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sudo blkid

Open the file /etc/fstab using your text editor with escalated privileges. I'm showing pluma here that comes with the mate desktop

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sudo pluma /etc/fstab&

Change the following to match your UUID and mountpoint and add it to the end of the file.

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UUID=B05E98FC5E98BD12						/media/win7			ntfs-3g			defaults,noatime,utf8,dmask=007,fmask=111,uid=1000,gid=1000	0 0 

Save and close the file then in the terminal

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sudo mount /media/win7

That entry will auto mount the partition at boot. Use whatever name you want for the mountpoint. Just make sure it matches what's in fstab

Good luck

[Tim44]

WharfRat, thanks for the good, clear instructions! It's going to be tomorrow afternoon before I can give them a try, so it'll be a while before you hear back from me.

In the meantime, I do have a couple of questions: For the sake of discussion and using "win7", that file/folder/partition is already being opened with a "/mount/tim/win7" (actually "/mount/tim/Data_Files"). First, will I need to do anything to stop it from continuing to open that way? Or, do your fstab modifications fool Mint 17 into opening the file as "/mount/win7" while still also opening it as "/mount/tim/Data_Files"? Second, will the security settings on "drwx------ 1 tim tim 4096 Aug 22 18:29 Data_Files" (or what will become 'win7") be an issue for other Users, such as "susan"?

In other words, I know exactly what you want me to do. I just don't have a good understanding of their consequences in regard to what will continue to happen to the "old" file (i.e. to Data_Files) and to the old/new security settings - how they will impact any new Users.

[WharfRat]

I think you mean /media/tim/Data_Files not /mount/tim/Data_Files

The fstab mounts take precedence so udisks looks in fstab for an overriding entry. The /media/tim folder will still be there, but no mountpoint for Data_Files will be created.

NTFS partitions are mounted with a fudged permission scheme since there's no such settings in windows. If you want full access for the universe then use

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UUID=B05E98FC5E98BD12						/media/win7			ntfs-3g			defaults,noatime,utf8,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=1000

You will be the owner, the group will be yours and others permission will be set to full access.

[Tim44]

WharfRat, I haven't igmored your advice from last Saturday; I've just had a very busy week.

You're right about the '/media/tim/Data_Files' - I was just getting tired, and made a mental mistake.

Anyway, I've spent at least nine hours banging my head against the wall today. (Ahh...Yes...It feels so good! -- When Mint works, it is great; when I can't find an answer, it is a pain!) I finally thought I had 'fstab' set up correclty, but I've run into a problem with File Permissions, etc.

The original 'fstab' settings (which, of course, don't refer to "Data_Files") generate the following permissions:

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 4 drwx------ 1 tim tim  4096 Aug  2 13:34 Data_Files
52 -rw------- 1 tim tim 50884 Jul 30 15:27 tele.txt

When I make the following 'fstab' modification, I get 766 permissions, as expected, and Nemo and '/media' show the pathway as '/media/Data_Files/ (etc.)', which is exactly what I want:

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UUID=1093967C79DEC6FF   /media/Data_Files  ntfs    nosuid,nodev,blksize=4096,defaults,umask=011    0       0
 4 drwxrw-rw- 1 root root  4096 Aug  2 13:34 Data_Files
52 -rwxrw-rw- 1 root root 50884 Jul 30 15:27 tele.txt

However, when I try to open a text file, such as 'tele.txt', I get a message saying the file has been flagged as "executable". Furthermore, when I try to use 'chmod -v' to change the permissions (after signing in as 'su'), it claims it's made the change, but it hasn't. I didn't use the 'uid=1000' and 'gid=1000' which you recommended, and maybe that's my problem.

Anyway, here are my questions:
1) What is keeping 'chmod' from working?
2) What is causing all the files to be flagged as "executable"?
3) I don't have permissions, as User "tim" to open the files or to drill down into the sub-directories, even though the File Permissions are 766. Why?

Any help will be greatly appreciated! Tim

[WharfRat]

I didn't use the 'uid=1000' and 'gid=1000' which you recommended, and maybe that's my problem.

That's part of your problem

1) What is keeping 'chmod' from working?

You can't close a door if you don't have one. There are no such permissions on an ntfs filesystem so how would you store them They are contrived/artificial/pseudo permissions.

2) What is causing all the files to be flagged as "executable"?

They're not. they are 766 by using umask=011 which is 777-011=766 rwx rw- rw-

umask sets the bitmask for file and directory permissions.

3) I don't have permissions, as User "tim" to open the files or to drill down into the sub-directories, even though the File Permissions are 766. Why?

root root owner:group and without the executable set for others, it prevents changing to that directory.

Try

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UUID=1093967C79DEC6FF      /media/Data_Files     ntfs-3g	 		defaults,noatime,utf8,dmask=002,fmask=111,uid=1000,gid=1000

[Tim44]

S U C C E S S ! ! !
WharfRat, thanks to the thousands of hours I'm sure you've spent learning Linux and helping others you have given me the answers i needed! I really appreciate your time! I would have never found this on my own.

For the record, here are the relevant parts of '/etc/fstab' that I've modified:

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UUID=d6260537-264c-40c1-aaf2-4ffb54ebbaf3         /media/Windows7-Virtual ext4    noatime,nodiratime,discard,rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2      0       0
UUID=0d96bfcf-622f-4b3c-9bea-896a1b32a9aa         /media/Linux-Virtual    ext4    noatime,nodiratime,discard,rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2      0       0
UUID=93f42969-5e89-4ea2-a7eb-bcc8a6461d04         /media/Virtual-Machines ext4    rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2 0       0
UUID=1093967C79DEC6FF   /media/Data_Files ntfs-3g defaults,noatime,utf8,blksize=4096,dmask=002,fmask=111,uid=1000,gid=1000        0       0
UUID=38F624AF6152223D   /media/Windows7   ntfs-3g defaults,noauto,noatime,utf8,blksize=4096,dmask=002,fmask=111,uid=1000,gid=1000 0       0

For people who have been following this thread, http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/tru ... unt.8.html has been a great source of 'fstab' information.

The following is a bit of explanation for why I did what I did along with some sample File Permissions:

'sda' solid state drive:
'Windows7-Virtual' and 'Linux-Virtual' reside on a solid state drive (and are used by VMware), so I've added 'nodiratime,discard' to minimize wear and tear on the SSD.
See http://apcmag.com/how-to-maximise-ssd-p ... x.htm#null if you'd like more details about SSD performance. -- I could have done more, but was hesitant. I'd be open to any suggestions.
Sample File Permissions:
Windows7-Virtual: "drwxrwxrwx" and "-rw-------" and "-rw-r--r--"
Linux-Virtual: "drwxrwxr-x" and "-rw-r--r--"

'sdb' hard drive:
Virtual-Machines: "drwxrwxrwx" and "-rw-------" and "-rw-r--r--"
Data_Files: "drwxrwxr-x" and "-rw-rw-rw-"
Windows7: "drwxr-xr-x" and "-rw-rw-rw-"
Note that I used 'noauto' to keep 'Windows7' from mounting / opening at boot time, as I seldom reference that partition from Linux Mint.

If you have time to kill, maybe you could enlighten me on what I'm seeing when running the following commands, but I've learned enough in the past couple of weeks to be perfectly happy to remain in my ignorance about the meaning of 'tim1000' and 'tim1000:1000' in the following dumps. Somehow, they appear to have an effect on the choice of 'uid=' and 'gid=' options in 'fstab'.

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# getent group |grep -E "(users|100)"
users:x:100:
tim:x:1000:

# cat /etc/passwd |grep tim
tim:x:1000:1000:Tim,,,:/home/tim:/bin/bash

Thanks again for your excellent help, WharfRat!

[WharfRat]

First of all congratulations on getting everything straightened out.

One suggestion I have is not to include blksize=4096 as an option as mount complains about it when mounted from the cl.

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qiana / # mount -t  ntfs-3g -o defaults,blksize=4096 /dev/sda2 /media/win7
WARNING: blksize option is ignored because ntfs-3g must calculate it.

getent group would be equivalent to

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cat /etc/group 

grep -E is extending the regular expression to search multiple entries. An easier way is

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getent group|egrep 'users|100'

or you can use

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egrep 'users|100' /etc/group

to get the same results.

Good luck and enjoy