Debian help: how to automount a USB drive writably?

[reddragdiva]

I have my record player server set up! It's an ancient IBM Thinkpad 560X (233MHz, 96MB RAM) with Debian squeeze. I installed etch from floppy (last version to work from floppy) and upgraded to squeeze. (I erroneously did this directly and it only required minor unbuggering. I recommend you go via lenny.)

I've attached the 500GB external drive to it and am using usbmount, which attaches it to /media/usb0, then serving /media/usb0 via Samba. The problem is that the mount is owned root:root and root can't change that, and I want the share to be writable over Samba. Is there a way to do this? Is there a better (stable mount point through plugging and unplugging or rebooting) way to mount the external drive sharably?

I can record from the turntable or cassette deck using SoX. I haven't worked out how to do simultaneous playback — ideas most welcome on this too. And the turntable's USB sound card can do up to 16 bit at 48kHz — how do I tell SoX (or the interface itself) to use this?

Comments

[aster13.livejournal.com]

No idea what you're talking about, but i wish to refer you to more important issues (:P) vis, are you going to Vagabonds?

[reddragdiva]

Yes. Yes, I am :-D

[aster13.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! So am i - see you there!

[bob]

samba can force which user and group stuff gets written as
force user and force group iirc

[reddragdiva]

D-: Sounds completely wrong and bad, even if it would work.

[untermensch.livejournal.com]

In /etc/samba/smb.conf:

[global]
    ... blah blah ...
    guest account = root
    ... blah blah ...

[sharename]
    comment = 500Gb external
    writable = yes
    locking = no
    path = /mnt/point/
    public = yes
    guest ok = yes
    create mask = 0664
    directory mask = 0775

[steer.livejournal.com]

God I've been using Ubuntu too long with is incrementing alphabetical release cycle. I looked at the names etch->lenny->squeeze and thought "christ, that must be about 15 releases WTF? Debian used to be so slow to release."

[reddragdiva]

Didn't you tell me a few years ago that there was no point using Ubuntu because Red Hat is standard?

[reddragdiva]

And actually using Debian as a server (and watching aptitude resolve embuggerations), I continue to snicker at the idea of Ubuntu Server.

[bob]

the other option is of course is to create a directory inthe root and make it a more useful owner.

[reddragdiva]

The drive's FAT32. All files are owned by whoever owns the mount point.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I don't recall ever saying such a thing. I think you must be confusing me with someone else because as far as I recall I'd ditched Red Hat long before Ubuntu was conceived and really I always found it a bit grotty. I've been Debian based since potato and can remember the ubgrade to woody in 2002 two years before the first Ubuntu release. I switched to Ubuntu just before Hoary came out so I've been drinking the Ubuntu Kool Aid pretty much since day one.

[bob]

umount and then change the ownership of the mount point then :)

[steer.livejournal.com]

My website and email are all hosted on an Ubuntu based virtual server that I run. I switched away from Debian because of the slow release cycle.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, is there any reason to use aptitude over simply apt-get from the command line. I've always found that pretty intuitive and good enough to go between ubuntu releases with no real faff.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I've pondered this one. Red Hat was I think the first linux I used properly (before that I'd used SGI and solaris stuff for work and windows stuff for play). I really didn't keep it long though because I was never quite happy with it. I spent a bit of time transient between SuSe (ugh), Slackware (ugh), Mandrake (ugh for children) before settling on Debian which people led me to believe had only just become usable by the potato release. apt-get was such an awesome improvement over rpm dependency hell that I was immediately sold despite the crappy release schedule at the time.

At the moment I use Ubuntu wherever I can although a crazed sysadmin on crack has forced my to use Centos which I loathe with every fibre of my being. It's so bad it's nearly solaris.

[reddragdiva]

That was the thing that root couldn't in fact do to /media/usb0. How annoying ...

[reddragdiva]

apt-get semi-officially doesn't do stuff nearly as reliably as aptitude. See recent discussion on sounder.

[reddragdiva]

CentOS is Red Hat. So it's stodgy but works. Much like Solaris. We use it at work with moderate joy.

I'm seriously pondering a Debian unstable desktop.

[reddragdiva]

I think I misremembered this.

Ubuntu apt versus FreeBSD ports triggered me sending a message to freebsd-questions saying "Dudes. Look, this is how it should be done. Holy shit."

Debian versus Ubuntu is like "Ah, this is the working example of the repository quality you were promising."

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... not so easy to find said dicsussion.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/2009-March/thread.html

I thought the only official advice was along the lines of "don't cross the streams".

The best I can find is some "don't use apt-get because if you use aptitude it breaks apt-get"

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/aptitude

This seems to me to be an excellent argument to pick one but not a good argument as to which.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Well it's Red Hat until you want to install some software. Then it's red hat but the repositories with anything useful are hosted by some bloke called Dave in Basingstoke who things that regular uptime tires his servers out.

Seriously, when I started here the sysadmin insisted on Centos for some centrally held stuff despite the fact he would never bloody log in to the machine (but it was his rack so his rules).

I needed tomcat -- hardly non-standard these days, and it was a third party rpm repos run by someone called Dag Wieers. http://dag.wieers.com/

Oh, and at the time I wanted to install the servers were down for two days.

Now call me crazy but I don't like trusting my site security to some random Belgian who lists at the top of his CV "looking for work". This may be uncharitable but for once it's a site that actually needs to be secure. However, that appeared to be the only way to get tomcat and patches with any degree of certainty.

Apparently though, this is what you get if you want both Centos and software to run on it.

I'm seriously pondering a Debian unstable desktop.

You should also balance your desktop on a wobbly pile of old phone directories over a pool of water and then throw rocks at it. :-)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Heh... it was you claiming Red Hat was standard or at least "more standard".

God, I realise how much more OS intolerant I'm becoming. Nowadays moving from Ubuntu to a red hat variant is like going from a sauna to an icy plunge pool of excrement and broken glass. Also I get itchy if I have to use windows for long periods of time. Every fibre of me screams "not ready for desktop deployment" and "good christ, where's the integrated software update facility? I have to hunt around the internet for software to install? WTF happened to my multiple desktops?"

[steer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think whichever way you access them the Ubuntu official repositories are a joy to work with.

In addition if you do have to compile (research software for example) the apt-file tool finds that missing library every time. :-)

[bob]

ive been lead to believe that aptitude deals with dependencies better and does cleaner removal. i still just use apt-get.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

I'm seriously pondering a Debian unstable desktop.

It's surprisingly not bad, I've been finding. (But this may depend on one's meaning for “desktop”.)

[reddragdiva]

I mean "latest Free Software candy and no repo snafus I can't unbugger myself." I've had quite enough unbuggering experience dealing with Ubuntu's little foibles.

My only worry would be insufficiently-DSFG drivers for the laptop hardware.

[steer.livejournal.com]

As I understand it this is the dangling dependency problem. I installed foolib in order to get gnome-foo. I removed gnome-foo and nothing else uses foolib so that should go too.

apt-get handles this gracefully (with apt-get autoremove) unless you install with aptitude as well. I have no idea if vice versa is true.

[oonh.livejournal.com]

I shamefully admit that I misread "Dag Wieers" as "Dog Wieners" (blame the small screen real estate of the ipod touch).

Hey, what is it with the British antipathy to the Belgians? I seem to have picked it up like a cold virus in last week's mail adhesive. What gives? Where does it come from?

[crispygoth.livejournal.com]

Looking at the usbmount thing, it looks like there's an option in the config file for setting FS options based on FS type.. Can you use that to set perms on the vfat FS? IIRC you can set uid, gid, file-perms and dir-perms in the vfat mount options.

Alternatively, you could probably write a custom udev rule to run a script to mount the FS manually: http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html#external-run

[steer.livejournal.com]

Um... I didn't know there was a British antipathy to the Belgians. I must have missed the memo. I just happened to mention he was Belgian. He's not untrustworthy because he's Belgian nor because he happens to have a name that is like Wiener. I just don't find major software packages being hosted on a third party website which don't even have a domain name related to the distro is a little unprofessional and, if Dog Wiener happens to turn to the darkside he could probably control my servers.

Belgium is usually considered to be an inspiringly dull country but I think this is rather harsh. Ghent and Bruges are beautiful and the Grand Place in Brussels is magnificent.