Here's my partition setup. I've shortened the UUIDs for readability, and, before anyone asks, I've carefully checked that I copied the correct UUIDs into /etc/fstab.
me@ubuntu:/$ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="a6205dda..." TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda2: UUID="99397b94..." TYPE="ext3" LABEL="DATA1" SEC_TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda3: UUID="135523f8..." TYPE="ext3" LABEL="DATA2" SEC_TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sda4: UUID="a1e4d70f..." TYPE="swap"
Here's how my fstab is configured:
me@ubuntu:/media/DATA2$ cat /etc/fstab
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
UUID=a6205dda... / ext3 errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=99397b94... /media/DATA1 ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev,user 0 0
UUID=135523f8... /media/DATA2 ext3 rw,nosuid,nodev,user 0 0
UUID=a1e4d70f... none swap sw 0 0
(Does whitespace matter in fstab? For example, does each field have to be separated by a single tab? Or any number of tabs?)
I've set up the mount points for the partitions in the /media directory:
me@ubuntu:/media$ ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 18 09:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 me me 4096 Feb 13 10:08 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 me me 4096 Feb 13 16:03 DATA1
drwxr-xr-x 2 me me 4096 Feb 13 16:03 DATA2
Thanks to the entries in the fstab, I can mount the partitions as an ordinary user, without any problems:
me@ubuntu:/media$ mount DATA1
me@ubuntu:/media$ mount DATA2
me@ubuntu:/media$ mount
/dev/sda1 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sda2 on /media/DATA1 type ext3 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,user=me)
/dev/sda3 on /media/DATA2 type ext3 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,user=me)
But here's the problem: DATA2 is mounted as root, which means I don't have write permissions for it. Why the difference, and what can I do to ensure DATA2 is mounted with the same permissions as DATA1?
me@ubuntu:/media$ ls -al
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Feb 18 09:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 me me 4096 Feb 13 10:08 ..
drwxrwxrwx 10 me me 4096 Feb 18 09:20 DATA1
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 13 13:57 DATA2
For reference, I'm using Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. Also, the order in which I mount the partitions has no effect on their permissions; they always have the permissions shown above.