Lost USB removable drive write permisions

Support & Help Requests
1

Hi,Since upgrading to Ubuntu 20.10 I have just noticed I have lost write permissions for the external removable usb stick, this is what my fstab looks like, I added rw, so not sure why its only reading, did I put rw in the wrong place? I also need auth to unmount it too lol. It appears the usb stick is fixed in the path too so when I move it to another usb slot it doesnt see it. Thanks in advance.

/etc/fstab: static file system information.

Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).


/ was on /dev/sdc1 during installation
UUID=8b7c1de8-6183-4a02-8928-d5f68e037d15 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
swap was on /dev/sdc5 during installation
UUID=0dfd9901-3916-4fd4-81b6-95026a822fb4 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Flash_USB_Disk_372710230235A28122641-0:0-part1 /mnt/usb-Flash_USB_Disk_372710230235A28122641-0:0-part1 auto nosuid,nodev,rw,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

2

Curiously I've managed to esolve this by hash-taging out the line that references the usb, how strange?

3

Not really. :wink:

You've done the right thing: out-commenting the USB reference

You see, '/etc/fstab' contains information about which filesystems should be mounted (and how) at boot time by the system (=root privileges).

After that, these devices are owned by the system.
(unless other privileges are specifically declared in fstab or in the mounted filesystem)

Because of this, you, as a normal user, can't write the device.

So you don't want user owned dynamically mounted devices like external HD's or USB-thumbdrives added to /etc/fstab.

External HD's or USB-thumbdrives are automatically mounted later on by a different mounting operation (udev) after login and doesn't need any editing of files or other user interaction.

If the Ubuntu 20.10 automatically added this USB device to /etc/fstab then it is clearly a bug in the installer that should be resolved.

4

Thanks though it appears to be working properly for now. I can't imagine I'd want usb drives mounted at boot time long before I go into a windows session.