Porteus

Porteus 4.0 32 bit, can not access usb hard drive JFS format, error: Failed to open file "mnt/sdb1" permission denied. Tried to modify permissions for this partition using PCmanFM, error: Error settings permissons: Operation not permitted.

hpfs.ko missing from file system modules. How to acquire and does kernel need compiling?

What is kernel crippled_sources.xzm used for?

Which fs format do you require, JFS or HPFS?

JFS is built as a module. Does it not load when your hard drive is mounted? You can manually modprobe jfs as root and then try to mount.

Yes, looks like HPFS is not built. Unfortunately you cannot use the crippled_sources.xzm to build an internal module, because the internal sources are stripped (crippled). You can only build external modules with it.

You would need the complete kernel sources, which would mean compiling the entire kernel with additionally including CONFIG_HPFS_FS I guess.

Short term need: JFS, long term also HPFS. Slackware based distros always had both.ko files. JFS module is loaded, can view partition but can not open any files. Permission denied. Try to change permission, that is not permitted If system can load a FS and display, why can't it open a file?

Maybe you need root access to open JFS files.

Yes, it does. Logged in as root and read/write activated for JFS. That does not seem a suitable long-term solution once installed on hard disk. Is it possible something needs to be modified in fstab? Below is current line:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 jfs users,noatime,nodiratime,suid,dev,exec,async,comment=x-gvfs-show 0 0

Perhaps users=??? something?

Can the drive be reformatted to something easier to work with?

Because the drive / partiton was created by root, (or fired up and gparted or another tool ran as root) we need to change permissions as you've seen. Have you tried this easy graphical method: (I'm using XFCE4)

Login as root, (or logout as guest and login as root)

Hover over desktop icon of your drive / partition. Right click and mount it with mount option if not already mounted.

Now choose Properties > Permissions

Now you can change the permissions to your liking / security needs. A quick whip-up would be:

root access / read & write
Group: Users
Group Access: Read and write
Others: Read and write.

Logout, and guest and others can now access the drive normally. Usually it is automounted already. Note I haven't tried JFS, but I'm relatively sure filesystem doesn't really matter here.

A clever option nanZor.

Had tried all the permission tips mentioned, but must not have been Root. Modifying partition permission was not enough, had to change individual file permission as well. Hopefully do not have to do this for every file. Running Porteus as live cd for now. Do not believe partition was created by root, as usb drive partition/format was not done by linux. Appears this is a feature/bug of Linux as other distros than Slack based responded similar. Load drive as root first, change permissions. Thank you!

No problem - note that in addition to being able to to change the permissions (as root) on the drive, it has the option box to change the permissions for the entire existing contents of the drive as well, so that would achieve what you wanted.

Unless you have logged in as root, these options will be grayed-out or missing.