TrueCrypt mount permissions -- noowner

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Level 1

1 points

TrueCrypt mount permissions -- noowner

OS X 10.5.5 / TrueCrypt 6.1

I'm trying to create a 200GB mountable file on an external disk - Archive.

/dev/disk2s1 on /Volumes/Archive (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled)
TrueCrypt@fuse0 on /private/tmp/.truecrypt auxmnt1 (fusefs, synchronous)
/dev/disk3 on /Volumes/TestCrypt (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

The 'noowners' option is driving me crazy.

I tried an option suggested in an earlier post to recreate the file as MSDOS and use the Disk Utility to reformat it... Each time I selected hfs, journaled, case-sensitive and every time it ended up noowners.

/dev/disk3 on /Volumes/TestCrypt (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners, mounted by sakshale)

I have also tried feeding mount options from the command line, but none of the OS X options were acceptable as valid! For example, "async" is clearly defined in the mount man page:

# /Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/TrueCrypt --text --mount-options="async" --non-interactive --password=PASSWORD /Volumes/Archive/TestCrypt /Volumes/TestCrypt
Error: Unknown option: async
#

Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Nov 21, 2008 2:55 PM

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Answer 1

biovizier

Level 5

7,931 points

Nov 21, 2008 3:49 PM in response to sakshale

When ' mount' reports ' noowners', that just means that the "Ignore ownership on this volume" option is checked in "Get Info". This isn't a property of the volume but rather how the Mac mounting the volume has mounted it. The default is "noowners" (i.e. ignore ownership) but once the setting is changed in "Get Info", that particular computer should store the setting.

In Leopard, due to an unfortunate design decision by Apple, "admin" authentication is now required to make this change and non-admin users are no longer able to use "Get Info" to change this setting, even on devices they own and have mounted themselves. If you find yourself needing to mount the volume on a system with TrueCrypt installed but to which you do not have "admin" access, it may be possible to use ' mount' itself to change the mount options (although this change won't be remembered between mounts). Eg.<pre>
mount -u -o owners /path/to/mountpoint</pre>

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Answer 2

Nov 21, 2008 9:42 PM in response to biovizier

Thank you very, very much. That works perfectly. I simply added that line to my start up script.

I have two comments to make about this issue:

1 - This should even be needed, at this --noowner option should never, ever be the default. This isn't OS 9!

2 - The "-o owner" counter option is not listed in the MAN pages.

Oh yes, just for the record. My username has been separated from my account. I was prompted to choose a new one when I logged in this evening. Just one more example of Apple's software quality control.

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