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I installed ubuntu 11.10. During installation, I created the default user (named MS). I can browse/edit and do anything in my hard disk(I have 7 partitions).

Today I created a new user named (ABC), this user cannot access my internal hard disk partitions. When I click on each partition the hard disk icon suddenly disappear from the left side device panel(inside home folder there is things like devices, bookmarks etc). So I checked /media directory and it says "folder contents cannot be displayed".

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>
proc                                       /proc        proc  nodev,noexec,nosuid  0  0  
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=9fa65e41-5c75-4636-a3b5-961739b245c2  /            ext4  errors=remount-ro    0  1  

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000b2307

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/sda1            2048    39997439    19997696   83  Linux

/dev/sda2   *    39999488    81946623    20973568   83  Linux

/dev/sda3        81947565   123877214    20964825   83  Linux

/dev/sda4       123887614   976773119   426442753    5  Extended

/dev/sda5       123887616   333602815   104857600   83  Linux

/dev/sda6       333604864   543320063   104857600   83  Linux

/dev/sda7       543322112   753037311   104857600   83  Linux

/dev/sda8       753039360   976773119   111866880   83  Linux

Information about the users

id ms
uid=1000(ms) gid=1000(ms) groups=1000(ms),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),46(plugdev),116(lpadmin),118(admin),124(sambashare)

id abc
uid=1002(abc) gid=1002(abc) groups=1002(abc),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),46(plugdev),116(lpadmin),118(admin),124(sambashare)

Also I got the following things while mounting the partition under the user abc.

Dec 21 23:04:15 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   64.093923] EXT4-fs (sda8): warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck is recommended
Dec 21 23:04:15 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   64.095606] EXT4-fs (sda8): recovery complete
Dec 21 23:04:15 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   64.095611] EXT4-fs (sda8): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
Dec 21 23:04:16 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   65.619595] EXT4-fs (sda7): recovery complete
Dec 21 23:04:16 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   65.619602] EXT4-fs (sda7): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
Dec 21 23:04:17 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   66.250818] EXT4-fs (sda6): warning: maximal mount count reached, running e2fsck is recommended
Dec 21 23:04:17 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   66.251195] EXT4-fs (sda6): recovery complete
Dec 21 23:04:17 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   66.251362] EXT4-fs (sda6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
Dec 21 23:04:18 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   67.080910] EXT4-fs (sda5): recovery complete
Dec 21 23:04:18 ms-Lenovo-G550 kernel: [   67.080916] EXT4-fs (sda5): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)

Here are the result of /media after mounting partitions.

abc@ms-Lenovo-G550:~$ ls -al /media/

total 28
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 2011-12-29 07:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 2011-12-11 22:30 ..
drwxrw----  6 ms   ms   4096 2011-11-19 15:45 Films
drwx------ 17 ms   ms   4096 2011-12-22 21:59 Misc
dr-x------  9 ms   ms   4096 2011-12-20 23:18 Ms
drwx------  6 ms   ms   4096 2011-12-28 18:50 Softs
drwx------  6 ms   ms   4096 2011-11-17 03:06 Song

Also different partitions are used to arrange things in an easy manner.

Thanks, Vipin MS

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  • Can you provide the output of sudo ls -al /media from the user abc? I suspect a permission problem, but it's strange because the user abc seems to be sudoer. Not connected to your problem, but are you sure that you need so many partitions? Isn't that quite annoying when one runs out of free space?
    – lumbric
    Dec 28, 2011 at 13:59
  • Here are the results. abc@ms-Lenovo-G550:~$ ls -al /media/ total 28 drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 2011-12-29 07:34 . drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 2011-12-11 22:30 .. drwxrw---- 6 ms ms 4096 2011-11-19 15:45 Films drwx------ 17 ms ms 4096 2011-12-22 21:59 Misc dr-x------ 9 ms ms 4096 2011-12-20 23:18 Ms drwx------ 6 ms ms 4096 2011-12-28 18:50 Softs drwx------ 6 ms ms 4096 2011-11-17 03:06 Song
    – Vipin Ms
    Dec 29, 2011 at 2:06
  • When you tried to access /media with Nautilus you got an error as mentioned above but with ls it seems to work fine? Is the user in the sudoer list? I suppose you need to enter your password to mount partitions? (you can test it with sudo echo foobar)
    – lumbric
    Dec 29, 2011 at 14:15
  • Hey, I found the issue, it's a problem with ext4 partition. I'm able to mount ntfs without any issue. When mounting NTFS the user and group automatically assign to abc.abc
    – Vipin Ms
    Dec 29, 2011 at 16:34

2 Answers 2

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+25

Your problem is with the user/group permissions on ext4. For abc to access read only, you need to set the permissions to 755 (on eg. /home/Ms) with

sudo chmod -R 755 /media/Ms

This will grant read only access for all the users on the system. If you want more security create a new group, add the two users to that group, and chown + chmod

sudo groupadd new_group
sudo usermod -a -G new_group ms
sudo usermod -a -G new_group abc
sudo chown ms:new_group -R /media/Ms
sudo chmod 770 -R /media/Ms

This will set the permissions to rwxrwx---, and only the two users can access the Ms folder.

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1

work around

If you want, you could set your partitions to be automatically mounted on boot for all users. It depends on you, if this is what you want or not. You can mount them to any point in your file system or even at several different points (by use of the bind option). This could be a possible work a round for your problem, so if you want you can try this out.

How to do so, is answered in this question: How to mount an internal HDD on start-up?

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  • This is not something I'm looking for. I know how to mount partitions in startup. Here the problem is newly creates users cannot access my partitions.
    – Vipin Ms
    Dec 29, 2011 at 2:15
  • This is not something I'm looking for. I know how to mount partitions on startup. Here the problem is newly created users cannot access my internal harddisk.
    – Vipin Ms
    Dec 29, 2011 at 2:17
  • Ok, I just thought in this situation it might be worth mentioning - maybe for others having the same problem. But yes, it's a wor a round and might not provide what you want.
    – lumbric
    Dec 29, 2011 at 14:11

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