mount ramfs as user

Question

My fstab entry:

none    /home/jreinhart/ramdisk    ramfs    defaults,user   0 0

The directory before mounting:

drwxrwxr-x  2 jreinhart jreinhart  4096  Oct 17 11:31 ramdisk

The directory after mount ramdisk:

drwxr-xr-x  2 root     jreinhart  4096  Oct 17 11:31 ramdisk

So, you can see the problem. Once I mount, the owner changes to root, and the group permissions go to r-x so I cannot use this ramdisk. What gives?

I'm trying to do this without having to su.

Answer 1

Assuming this is Linux, you could also use tmpfs (see here for differences, i.e., why it might be advisable to use tmpfs), which is explained here and (see link) supports the options mode, gid and uid. There's the following paragraph in tmpfs.txt which might also be relevant:

These options do not have any effect on remount. You can change these
parameters with chmod(1), chown(1) and chgrp(1) on a mounted filesystem.

So maybe a sudo chown ... is still needed (I guess not, but I'm not quite sure about this, sorry.)

Answer 2

If you want to avoid sudo you could use the automounter here (service autofs). Look for executable automount-maps. There you can script anything you want before, during and after the actual mount.

Answer 3

It is generally somewhat dangerous to give non-root acces to a ramfs mount, since a (malicious/ignorant) user could put enough data into it to fill all available system RAM. Like others above have mentioned, something like tmpfs or even a ram disk might be more desirable for non-root use. (sr_'s post has some really good reads.)

Answer 4

After you mount the ramdisk, /home/jreinhart/ramdisk becomes the root of the mounted filesystem. Apparently this directory is owned by root. Change it (and any other relevant file on the ramdisk) once and for all to be owned by jreinhart.

You may have seen a different behavior for filesystems like vfat. On filesystems that have no notion of ownership, the filesystem driver tries to come up with sensible fake ownership, generally making every file owned by the user who mounted the filesystem. Filesystems like ramfs that provide normal unix permissions expose them directly.