Use external drive as a folder in nginx

Question

I'm trying to mount an external drive on a web folder, call it flash:

After mounting the external drive which is located in /dev/sdb1 the permissions change like this:

sudo mount -o defaults /dev/sdb1 /var/www/html/TV/flash

When I try to browse a file from the mounted location, I get 404 Not Found while the file exists.

When I try to list files inside the folder it says Permission Denied

Also, I have tried changing the ownership of the folder, but didn't work:

sudo chown -R "$USER":www-data flash/

chown: changing ownership of 'flash/System Volume Information': Read-only file system

chown: changing ownership of 'flash/': Read-only file system

Answer 1

There is a difference between folder folder\

folder\ means things inside the folder not the folder itself. folder indicates the folder only not the files and sub-directory residing inside it. But as you're using the chown command recursively ownership of all sub-directory and file inside folder will also be changed.

So typing the following shall solve the situation

sudo chown -R "$USER":www-data /var/www/html/TV/flash

Also change files permission. Your're making $USER as owner and www-data as group owner. And your existing permission showing 500 for the directory. So only owner and not the group owner can search through the directory. and your we server is running under the group owner www-data

A good practice is keeping all directory permission as 755 and files permission as 644.

find /var/www/html/TV/flash -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www/html/TV/flash -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Comment in case of any error.