Strange mounting issue with ext3

[Pat Suwalski]

Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Roderich Schupp
> <roderich.schupp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Patryk Zawadzki <patrys at pld-linux.org> wrote:
>>> The proper solution is to make the root of the filesystem owned and/or
>>> writable by your user of choice. This is the part you should do after
>> What is needed here is a new mount option: "forget about the
>> uids on the drive, just pretend any file is owned by the mounting user".
> 
> Which can be translated as "just unscrew any disk, put it into a cheap
> USB sleeve et voila, readable root files with no unix knowledge!"

With all due respect, if you go to that trouble, then using it as root 
is moot. You'll get the data off one way or another.

Sounds like what it being asked for is NFS root squashing but for an 
arbitrary user.

This would make sense. I have ext3 external disks that I take from 
computer to computer. It's a constant nuisance with the [UG]IDs. Using 
vfat makes everything have 755 permissions or 644 permissions and is 
worse than having a user-permission-squashed ext3.

And, despite what another eMail in this thread said, ext3 is ideal for 
USB sticks. You really do want the journalling in case the device is 
pulled out inadvertently.

--Pat