[Wolves] Running linux apps off a USB HDD

[James Turner]

On Sunday 23 Jan 2005 00:15, Stuart Langridge wrote:
> Paul Harrison wrote:
> > Peter Oliver wrote:
> > | Type "mount".  This will tell you what options were used when the
> > | filesystem was mounted.  If "noexec" is mentioned it means that
> > | executing files on this filesystem is forbidden.
> >
> > It was & is "noexec", I'm afraid.
> >
> > I've tried putting the following into /etc/fstab:
> >
> > /dev/sda1    /media/sda1    vfat    noauto,users,umask=000 0 0
>
> I *think* (and someone will correct me here) that vfat filesystems are
> *always* noexec, because vfat doesn't support permissions. (That's why
> MS created NTFS.)

The noexec option is not set as default when a vfat filesystem is mounted (at 
least not on my system), and every file appears as having executable 
permissions set. Mount syntax used:

mount <partition> <mount-point> -t vfat

If you want to be able to use POSIX-style permissions under FAT in a kludgy 
sort of way you could try mounting using "umsdos" as the filesystem type - 
for details see:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/UMSDOS-HOWTO.html

Although NTFS does support POSIX-style permissions (for the seldom-used 
Windows POSIX subsystem/Services For UNIX) I doubt Linux supports this 
feature. In fact the NTFS support barely worked at all the last time I tried 
it (which was a while ago, admittedly) and had a similar approach to vfat as 
regards permissions - use the same permission value for every file/directory, 
configurable as a mount option but otherwise defaulting to allowing 
everything.

Regards,

James