I have Linux and Windows XP operating systems on my hard disk. I am able to read from my C and D drives through Linux, but I am not able to create or modify files in these drives through linux unless I am logged in as the root user. what should I do to overcome this problem. My C and D Drives are shown as vfat File system. Thank u in advance

I'm assuming that Linux is on a driver other than C: and D:, right? And it doesn't seem like much of a 'problem', why can't you just switch to root? (type 'su root' into a shell if you didn't know how to switch)

I am using RedHat 8.0 and 9. I have found the following when working with the /etc/fstab file. The following will give read/write access to root and read-only access to everyone else: /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults 0 0 The following will give read/write access to everyone: /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,umask=0 0 0

< SNIP > ...why can't you just switch to root? < /SNIP > Because that's bad practice...too many reasons why not to go into here! Besides, sudo would be a better alternative. As egkenny said, adding umask=0 to the line in /etc/fstab is what you want to do. You can also pass it as a parameter if mounting by hand.