Trying to gain r/w access to mounted Windows folders

[pofadda]

This has worked before but my box seems to have forgotten how!
I have my email files in a FAT32 Windows folder and a copy of the (Thunderbird) client in Windows and Suse 10. The Linux client profile points correctly to the Windows folder. All the machine's Windows partitions are mounted and shown in Linux as a subtree called 'Windows'. Root is its owner.

When I try to start T'bird in Linux I get the message saying that it can't be opened, indicating that it is locked. It's not. This doesn't happen if I am root but does show that the files are accessible, if only to root. I can change the ownership of the subtree alone but not any piece of it, probably because of its Windows origins. I get the message:
Operation not permitted
failed to change ownership of `/windows/g' to chrism

I tried sharing the Windows/email folder ('Everyone') but that didn't work. FWIW, my user login names on both OSs is the same.

What next, please?

[cybertron]

You can't change the ownership using the normal chown command because FAT32 doesn't have that capability. The reason that you appear to have permissions and owners of those files is that mount simulates them so that you can access them as normal Linux files. To change the ownership or permissions on that partition you'll need to edit the fstab entry for it, which should be available in Yast as mounted partitions or something along those lines. Just give everyone read/write access or change it so that it's mounted as your user (root will still have access as well because it largely ignores file permissions).

[Icarus]

Search the forums as this has been answered almost weekly, basicly it needs to be mounted with r/w for everyone or it can't be written to at all (default mount is read only)
In the /etc/fstab you can have a line simular to this and it should do the job for you (but as cyber said, permissions can not be preserved on FAT32 due to it's simplicity)

/dev/hda1 /windows vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0

The umask is what you need, think of it as a reversed chmod setting, so 000=777

[pofadda]

Thank you both. It can be quite irritating to those in the know when others' searches seem so inept that they all ask the same questions over and over again! My searches failed, hence my post. This seems to be a candidate for a 'Windows and Linux' FAQ or a sticky.

Thanks again!