[NTLUG:Discuss] Can I convert a vfat partition to ext2?

[Jay Cox]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2001, Courtney Grimland wrote:

> > (2) Would there be any need to convert the vfat drive to ext2?
>
> It seems that SMB clients are not priveleged enough because there is no
> write permission that I can set on the files in this partition.  Running
> 'chmod 777 -R *' on the shared directory does not give the desired effect.
> I see in the smd.conf man page that I can map the DOS read-only, hidden, and
> archive attributes to the "corresponding" ext2 file permissions, but that
> seems a little too kludgy for me.  This is why I wanted to convert this
> drive to ext2 (or perhaps another filesystem, but that would be another
> learning project, for another day, since I've never played with anything but
> ext2), so I can properly control the file permissions.
>

vfat isnt goint to support chmod or chown.  I suppose there isnt any
reason why it couldnt (say the vfat driver might could keep an extra table
of files to give separate permissions and ownership somewhere in the vfat
filesystem or the root partition) but I assume such a solution
would be very kludgey and downright insecure.

I believe your problem isnt related to the samba clients but the samba
server. if your samba server doesnt have the permissions, neither are the
clients.  I've never set up a samba server so I dont have a clue what uid
your samba server might be running under but from the troubles you seem
to be having I doubt it's root.


You can set ownership and group ownership for all files in a vfat
partition in /etc/fstab (as well as from the command line for mount).

The following sets the owner of all files mounted from /dev/hda3 to
/dos/hidden fo whoever has the uid 600. (look in /etc/passwd for your
uid).

/dev/hda3                 /dos/hidden               vfat   uid=600 0 0

perhaps all you need to do is set that uid number in the mount options to
"nobody" or yourself?

Jay Cox