[wellylug] Need some help with Gentoo

[michael at diaspora.gen.nz]

>drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 48 Jun 1 15:27 win_c
>drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 48 Jun 1 15:27 win_d
>drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 48 Jun 1 15:27 win_e
>
>after:
>
>drwxr--r-- 14 root root 16384 Jan 1 1970 win_c
>drwxr--r-- 40 root root 32768 Jan 1 1970 win_d
>drwxr--r-- 70 root root 16384 Jan 1 1970 win_e

I've been caught by this one before.  There's a difference between the
permissions on the directory "/win_c" on the root file system (mounted on
"/"), and the permissions on the root directory of the VFAT filesystem
stored on the device "/dev/hda1".

In your case, the directory "/win_c" on the root file system has the
permissions:

    drwxrwxrwx

And the permissions on the root directory of the file system in question
(stored on "/dev/hda1") are:

    drwxr--r--

What a mount does is effectively completely replace one directory with
the root directory of another filesystem; so the "before" permissions
don't matter at all.

In your case, you're dealing with a VFAT filesystem, which makes things
more difficult, as it doesn't have native permissions at all; directories
and files are "meant" to be world writable in the VFAT world.  So you
can't mount the filesystem, and then do a chmod on the root directory
to get the effect you want.

Hrmmm.  That's not a very clear explanation -- hopefully you'll understand
what I mean :).