hi everybody,
i just joint this group. i am a new linux user and have installed
redhat 9 enterprise edition on my system.

can somebody tell me how to allow users other than root to write on
mounted partions.i have entered following in my
etc\fstab:

#win
/dev/hda6/ /windows_e vfat default,rw,user 0 0

do i have to use unmask option ?what is unmask.

also please suggest few video players for redhat.which can play both
dvd as well as vcd.i tried to download mpegtv but fttp downloads are
not allowed in our university.

and how can i add enque option to mp3 files , i am using xmms player.

please help!

linux_learner <neha.sweet@gmail.com> wrote:
> can somebody tell me how to allow users other than root to write on

man mount. Change the umask.

> mounted partions.i have entered following in my

Anybody can write in mounted partitions! You know that perfectly well,
since your home is on a mounted partition! Please rephrase your
question so that it says what you MEAN, not a load of bilgewater.

> /dev/hda6/ /windows_e vfat default,rw,user 0 0

> do i have to use unmask option ?what is unmask.

Yes ("umask"). Look it up. The man pages are on your machine too, no?
You got the idea from somewhere, so follow up. on that.

> also please suggest few video players for redhat.which can play both
> dvd as well as vcd.i tried to download mpegtv but fttp downloads are

What's "vcd"? Oh. Video cd? Is that bigger or smaller than a dvd?
ANyway, who cares what size it is - that's up to a device driver. The
format on the device is what's important. All your players should be
fine, I suppose, to the full extent of their capabilities. "mplayer" is
the canonical answer.

> and how can i add enque option to mp3 files , i am using xmms player.

No idea what you mean. Man google.

> please help!

Why? What have you done to help yourself? Tell me and if it is
impressive I might be inclined to help you help yourself further.


Peter

linux_learner wrote:

> hi everybody,
> i just joint this group. i am a new linux user and have installed
> redhat 9 enterprise edition on my system.

No such thing, perhaps you mean you have installed Red Hat Linux 9. The
latest version of Red Hat Enterprise is only at the version 4 level.

> can somebody tell me how to allow users other than root to write on
> mounted partions.i have entered following in my
> etc\fstab:
>
> #win
> /dev/hda6/ /windows_e vfat default,rw,user 0 0
>
> do i have to use unmask option ?what is unmask.

Please read 'man mount' from the console or xterm session for the
details. Try something like;

/dev/hda6 /windows_e vfat rw,users,umask=022 0 0

> also please suggest few video players for redhat.which can play both
> dvd as well as vcd.i tried to download mpegtv but fttp downloads are
> not allowed in our university.

mplayer; http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html
xine; http://xinehq.de/

> and how can i add enque option to mp3 files , i am using xmms player.

Red Hat for legal reasons choose not to include support for mp3's please
visit; http://www.xmms.org/download.php

Now for the bad news, Red Hat Linux 9 is no longer supported by almost
everyone, Red Hat ended Support the end of April last year (2004). You
still can find limited support for Red Hat Linux 9 at;

http://www.fedoralegacy.org/


--
Contained within the Microsoft EULA;
This Limited Warranty is void if failure of the Product has resulted
from accident, abuse, misapplication, abnormal use or a virus.

Hello,


On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:01:20 +0200, linux_learner <neha.sweet@gmail.com> wrote:

> hi everybody,
> i just joint this group. i am a new linux user and have installed
> redhat 9 enterprise edition on my system.
>
> can somebody tell me how to allow users other than root to write on
> mounted partions.i have entered following in my
> etc\fstab:
>
> #win
> /dev/hda6/ /windows_e vfat default,rw,user 0 0
>
> do i have to use unmask option ?what is unmask.

The manual page for mount says:

umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are not present).
The default is the umask of the current process. The value is given
in octal.

Can somebody explain to me what that means? I don't understand it.

Believe it or not, I do understand that the umask of a process is used to
*remove* bits from the permission mask when *creating* files and directories.
So, if I create a file, and the system call has a mode argument of, say
111111001 in binary, and the umask is 000010010 in binary, the file is created
with a permission mask of (mode & ~ umask), or 111101001 binary.
In every position where the umask has a one, the resulting permission
mask of the file or directory gets a zero.

To linux_learner: the permission mask is what you see to the left when
you do ls -l. The output from ls -l is e.g. rwxrwxrwx, with letters
instead of the digit one, or eg. rwxr--r-- with hyphens instead of the
zeros. There are three digits for the owner of the file, three for
members of the file's group, and three for the rest of the users.
Within each triple, the first indicates read permission (1=permitted),
the second write permission, and the third execute permission.

There are e few more twists to this, but I just failed to find the manpage
that describe these. I tried open(2) chmod(2) rename(2) unlink(2)
and a couple of others.

Question to everybody: what is the point of associating an umask with
a mount point? If the file system type does not support permission bits,
we need a default permission mask to apply to all reads and writes. This
is not the same thing as an umask.

If the file system type suppports permission masks, why do we need a umask
associated with the file system? Just convenience and flexibility? If so,
how do the two umasks, that of the mount point and that of the process
combine? And: whatever the answer to that one is, how do you deduce that
from the "explanation" given in the man page?

-Enrique

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:29:39 +0200, Peter T. Breuer <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:

> linux_learner <neha.sweet@gmail.com> wrote:
>> can somebody tell me how to allow users other than root to write on
>
> man mount. Change the umask.
>
>> mounted partions.i have entered following in my
>
> Anybody can write in mounted partitions! You know that perfectly well,
> since your home is on a mounted partition! Please rephrase your
> question so that it says what you MEAN, not a load of bilgewater.
>
>> /dev/hda6/ /windows_e vfat default,rw,user 0 0
>
>> do i have to use unmask option ?what is unmask.
>
> Yes ("umask"). Look it up. The man pages are on your machine too, no?
> You got the idea from somewhere, so follow up. on that.

man umask

returns Bash-builtins. The entry for umask says

umask [-p] [-S] [mode]
The user file-creation mask is set to mode. If mode begins with a
digit, it is interpreted as an octal number; otherwise it is interpreted
as a symbolic mode mask similar to that accepted by chmod(1).
If mode is omitted, the current value of the mask is printed. The -S
option causes the mask to be printed in symbolic form; the default output
is an octal number. If the -p option is supplied, and mode is
omitted, the output is in a form that may be reused as input. The return
status is 0 if the mode was successfully changed or if no mode argument
was supplied, and false otherwise.

All this says about what umask *is*, is "user file-creation mask".
Then it talks mostly about how an argument like a+x translates to octal,
but what does that octal value do? How shall a newbie find the right
man-page from the above text?

I guess that when you were young you did as I did. You read tons of man pages,
and understood something now and then. Over time an understanding accumulated.
But you don't remember how long it took! (Or do you? I don't *realy* know
how this was for you. Perhaps you are admirably clever?

But what I don't understand is, Why is it a goal to have everybody go through
the same path? Some people do not have the intelligence to make sense of
poorly explained manpages. Some people don't have the interest and memory
capacity to remember details they read (but hardly understood) three weeks
ago, and relate those detail to others they read today, and say Aha!

The wonderfull thing about a civilization is that people can specialize.
All the young learners, some fools, some lazy, and some neither, come here
and get over the hurdles in a few hours thank to the friendly and willing
helpers.

If a musician comes to me and asks for help with his computer, I am glad
he is a musician and devotes his time and interest in creating wonderful
music (hrm, well, some do, anyway) and will rather help him than have a
world full of computer experts and no musicians. I am not a musician.
I am a music consumer.

-Enrique

Enrique Perez-Terron <enrio@online.no> wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:29:39 +0200, Peter T. Breuer <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>> linux_learner <neha.sweet@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> do i have to use unmask option ?what is unmask.
>>
>> Yes ("umask"). Look it up. The man pages are on your machine too, no?
>> You got the idea from somewhere, so follow up. on that.

> man umask

> returns Bash-builtins. The entry for umask says

That's fine for general info, though of course loking in man mount will
tell him how to use umask in the mount context, which he is asking
about.

umask=value
Set the umask (the bitmask of the permissions that are
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
not present). The default is the umask of the current
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
process. The value is given in octal.


Nobody said to do "man umask", but to "look it up". I gave him the
clue that he should read further in the place he got the word from!

> but what does that octal value do? How shall a newbie find the right
> man-page from the above text?

By using the intelligence G-d gave him and which is currently filling
up the space between his ears.


> I guess that when you were young you did as I did. You read tons of man pages,
> and understood something now and then. Over time an understanding accumulated.
> But you don't remember how long it took! (Or do you? I don't *realy* know
> how this was for you. Perhaps you are admirably clever?

I remember exactly what I did - I tried every command in /bin and
/usr/bin. Fortunately "apropos" came early, so I effectively stopped
reading there and started interacting instead. Grepping every single
man page for "umask" is what I would have done in his situation (man
grep), since it beats a paper manual index.

> But what I don't understand is, Why is it a goal to have everybody go through
> the same path? Some people do not have the intelligence to make sense of
> poorly explained manpages.

So what? I STILL can't understand the solaris manpage for "passwd"
that I couldn't understand back then. It's gibberish written by a
thousand monkeys, wittering on about network passwords and passwords,
as though there were two things ... ah well. Thinking that you have to
understand something BEFORE you use it is a common mistake. Don't. The
universe won't care if you understand it or not - just use it.

In the present case, it would take him about an hour to try every
possible umask setting, and see which ones he liked. Not that I
imagine that it would take him more than 30s to try "0". But maybe
he's a stickler for detail and also doesn't grok the relationship he
will see (cmplementarity) between the number he gives and the general
nature of theperms on the files in the mounted directories. In that
case he might go through them all (groan!).


>Some people don't have the interest and memory
> capacity to remember details they read (but hardly understood) three weeks
> ago, and relate those detail to others they read today, and say Aha!

Then let them develop it, if that's an objective. Being interested is
the first requirement for learning anything (that, and having fun).
Let him look, and try.

> If a musician comes to me and asks for help with his computer, I am glad
> he is a musician and devotes his time and interest in creating wonderful
> music (hrm, well, some do, anyway) and will rather help him than have a

Personally, I'd rather have silence, or better, the sound of waves on
the beach.

> world full of computer experts and no musicians. I am not a musician.
> I am a music consumer.

I ain't - I'm an inventive person. I find passively consuming anything
infinitely boring and quite unbearable, perhaps particularly music. I
can stand Mozart, because at least the patterns are not predictable
nor easy to recall, but I wuldn't ever buy any.

That's the fun thing about computers - they are a canvas to paint ones
thoughts on and against.

Peter

i mean when i right click on mp3 files i sould be able to add the file
to the xmms instead of playing the file directly and removing all the
previous songs i have added.

reagrding what i have done to help myself i have searched enough of web
pages and am still doing so and i don't need to impress u to make u
help me.

anyway can any one direct me to some very good tutorial for linux for
new learner. i am going through some but its not very good for learners

thanx to everybody for there help