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I'm running Xubuntu 16.04.1, and backed up all my critical files to a 3-TB external USB drive before doing a clean install. However to do so I had to use the "Send to" applet in Thunar, and work in a "sudo thunar" environment. Consequently all the backup files of my home directory are owned by "root" rather than myself.

Consequently after restoring the files I had to do a recursive "chown" to restore my user and group ownership.

I'd like to avoid this problem for future backups, but it appears that the "uid" and "gid" options are omitted from ext4 mount options, nor do I find anything equivalent that I could add to fstab to force ownership. Can anyone tell me if (a) what I want is possible for ext4 filesystems and (b) if it is, how to go about it?

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Try working in a non-sudo environment?

As sudo means that the "root" user is copying it instead of the user (you). So I assume that if you do not work in a sudo environment, the user (you) who copied it will inherit the ownership of the copied files.

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  • Unfortunately, because of the way this version mounts the USB drive, it can only be written by the root user. That's the whole point of my question: how can I force the mounting without sudo? – Jim Kyle Sep 14 '16 at 12:50

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