# [External USB Hard Drive] : mount UFS partition with non-root user



## myre75 (Jan 1, 2013)

Hi all,

I have an external Hard Drive. I formated like below :

`# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da4 bs=1m count=128`
`# newfs -L MyPassport -O2 -U -m 6 /dev/da4`

I checked with root :

`# mount /dev/ufs/MyPassport /mnt`

Works fine.

So, I checked my devfs and wrote :

-> /etc/devfs.rules


```
[mypassport=12]
add path 'ufs/MyPassport' mode 0660 group operator
```

and rc.conf

-> /etc/rc.conf

```
devfs_system_ruleset="mypassport"
```

With my user :

`# mount /dev/ufs/MyPassport /mnt/`

Unfortunately, I can't mount my external HDD : 

```
mount: /dev/ufs/MyPassport: Operation not permitted
```

I did the same thing with USB stick(like handbook) and all is working fine.

Any idea ?

Thank you for your help.


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## Beastie (Jan 1, 2013)

You missed an essential part: allowing unprivileged users to mount file systems.

For that you must add *vfs.usermount=1* to /etc/sysctl.conf and use sysctl(8) to set it on the running system.

The Handbook has all the details you need.


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## myre75 (Jan 2, 2013)

Thank you for your answer 

I followed the handbook when I did the configuration.

It's why I'm here :-(


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## Beastie (Jan 3, 2013)

So do I have to understand from your post that it still doesn't work?

Another possible reason for "Operation not permitted" is that the user doesn't own/is not allowed to access the mountpoint. Since you probably don't own /mnt, you may want to create a directory inside your home directory and use it as your mountpoint instead, as the Handbook suggests. So did you do that too?


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## myre75 (Jan 4, 2013)

I found my mystake : I made some clean-up on /etc/rc.conf, and all is working fine.

Thank you !


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