From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C4F0138247 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 2014 23:44:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 728FBE0A9D; Thu, 2 Jan 2014 23:44:03 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mailex.mailcore.me (mailex.mailcore.me [94.136.40.61]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DAEFE0A49 for ; Thu, 2 Jan 2014 23:44:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from host86-129-175-149.range86-129.btcentralplus.com ([86.129.175.149] helo=[192.168.1.15]) by mail4.atlas.pipex.net with esmtpa (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Vyrvl-0005BH-8H for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Thu, 02 Jan 2014 23:44:01 +0000 Message-ID: <52C5F9C0.5070101@fuuzetsu.co.uk> Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2014 23:44:00 +0000 From: Mateusz Kowalczyk User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.1.0 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Preparing a shared USB stick References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailcore-Auth: 11603993 X-Mailcore-Domain: 1390428 X-Archives-Salt: 47944846-1c3c-409e-b517-5cd678db4bdb X-Archives-Hash: 4f72dd98ed2b7ba24b82767482d08297 On 02/01/14 23:02, Chris Stankevitz wrote: > Hello, > > Please consider a USB "stick" that is unformatted but is to be used by > multiple people/machines. Ideally your instructions will work for all > people/os/WM, but if necessary please assume that everyone is running > gnome under linux Well, if it ideally should work across multiple operating systems, you're probably stuck with FAT32 or similar due to Windows. > 1. How should I prepare this device so that it can be plugged into any > machine and will be writable by anyone? I suspect the answer will > involve words like fdisk, mkfs.xxx, mkdir/mount, chmod/chown. I'm > most interested in the chmod/chown part. If you go with FAT, there's no notion of ownership (I believe) so it's not a problem. If you don't, I still don't think chmod/chown matters as long as the user has the permissions to write to the stick when mounted on their own machine. I might be wrong though! > 2. How can I prepare the device so that files/directories added by > people in the future will continue to be writable by anyone? Likewise, I think they'll be able to as long as they have the permission to write to the mounted stick _on their own machine_. > 3. How can I ensure that all files will appear to have the same owner; > or, if this is not important, can you explain why it should not be a > problem. I think it's not a problem, at least not with FAT. > And of course if you can refer me to a document that explains this I'm > happy to read it. > > Thank you, > > Chris > I'm not an expert but hopefully this helps to at least steer you in the right direction. I used multiple USB sticks across multiple machines across multiple systems in the past and I never had any ownership concerns that you do. The only issues were if one of the systems couldn't read the file format used. -- Mateusz K.