Use of chown/chgrp

[Breandan Goodall]

First off I should say this is not a bug as such, but I am having some 
difficulty. 

I dual-boot between my Linux installation (Mandrake) and Windows 2000 (using 
vfat file system) and I would like to share a common home directory for my 
ordinary user account. 
Natuarally this requires it to be based in the Windows partion, however the 
owner
and group for those partions are set as root. In trying to change the group (or 
owner)
I get the following message:

    address@hidden /root]# chgrp -c  trusted /mnt/waterfall/Audio/
    chgrp: /mnt/waterfall/Audio/: Operation not permitted

where waterfall is the mount point, and Audio is just a folder in the partion. 

I checked up on the error message in the Linux FAQ and it occurrs when a file's 
attribute blocks the operation. lsattr & chattr work only for Linux file 
systems so I cannot check or change, if this is the direct cause. I also 
'fiddled' mount to see if there was an option there that could be used, no luck 
though. 

Basically I want my user account to have write access (which only root has at 
the moment).
I can use chmod to give all users write access, but it is a bit of a dirty hack 
and also is resets every time the partions are mounted. I could add the group 
root to my user account, but then I might as well login as root. 

Really sorry to be bothering, but thanks for your time in advance, 

   Breandan Goodall


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Breandan Goodall
Belfast,
N.Ireland

Email: address@hidden
Phone: +44 (0)7866 919275
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