Access rights to Windows partition

Getting started

When creating a Windows partition, it may happen that only the "root" has the necessary privileges, to have read and write access to the partition.

Here is a small tip on how to assign rights to users:

Implementation

Create a group
Start by creating a group (eg Windows) which we associate certain users and to which a ID group 1001 will be given.

# groupadd -g 1001 Windows

Adding a user

We must now add use(s) to the group.

To add a user to a group, simply edit /etc/ group file, for example using a command editor as "vi":

# vi /etc/group

to add the name (s) at the end of the line separating the members names by a comma:

Windows:x:1001:user1,user2

Modifying the /etc/fstab file

Once the group created and added users must edit the fstab file.
(found in /etc/fstab).

# Vi/etc/fstab 

Assuming that your 1st partition Windows/system is mounted on / dev/hda1, and the 2nd Windows/data on /dev/hda5/

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows/system ntfs user,noauto,gid=1001,umask=027,ro 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/windows/data vfat user,noauto,gid=1001,umask=027,rw 0 0

The "gid" will allows the group "1001", the "umask" to "027" gives all the "rights".

Note also the rw on the second partition (FAT32),gives it the rights to write.

Another solution is to edit the file /etc/ fstab and replace the mounting options with a simple:

users,umask=0

E.g:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/windows/data vfat users,umask=0  0 0

All users will have read/write rights

The changes are effective at the next reading file "fstab".