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I have burned the ubuntu iso distribution on my flash drive and I boot into ubuntu from the flash USB drive. Note that I am using the option 'Try without installing ubuntu' while booting.

The problem is if I try to use any other usb device all the file system on that usb device appears read only to the default ubuntu user as well as for the root. The volume appears as read-only.

Next, I tried to remount the usb device and make it rw using

sudo mount -o rw,ubuntu /dev/src1 /media/<mount-device-name>

While the command seems to succeed and I get no errors, the device doesnt become read-write. The mount entries in fstab still show the device as read-only.

Any suggestions as what is going wrong?

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  • there are seem to be typos in your command - what is the "ubuntu" option? Also, /dev/src1 should be /dev/sdc1. Also, usually the mount point is a subdierctory under /media, not the /media directory itself – Sergey Oct 14 '11 at 14:20
  • ubuntu was the default user when I got booted on to ubuntu – kp9 Oct 14 '11 at 14:34
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ubuntu is not a valid mount option. First you need to know the user ID of the user you want to allow read/write access. In the case of a Live session user, it is 999. The command becomes:

sudo mount -o rw,uid=999 /dev/src1 /mnt

You should not mount a partition on /media because /media is reserved for holding multiple mounted devices. Also, consider using the File browser for mounting the partition.

I was assuming that you are using a filesystem that does not support UNIX file permissions, such as FAT32 and NTFS. If you are using a file permissions-aware filesystem, you have to make yourself the owner of the files. Note: dangerous command ahead, so check that you are actually changing the ownership of your USB partition and not your root filesystem:

sudo chown -R ubuntu: /media/your-usb-drive

(note the colon, this causes the group membership to be updated to ubuntu too)

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  • In the future you can find the uid of a user using: id <user> Where <user> is the name of the user you wish to find the ID for. – Marco Ceppi♦ Oct 14 '11 at 14:30
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    Worth to note that uid option is not a general one, but it is valid only for some filesystem types, as for example vfat. – enzotib Oct 14 '11 at 15:09

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