Mounting a FAT partition in Linux so that a group of users can write on it

Requirements: That the kernel has been configured with FAT filesystem support.

Verify that the group owner of the device that represents the FAT partition has reading and writting permissions on it. Generally, this is the group disk. For example, if the FAT partition that we want to mount is represented by /dev/hda4, we would check its permissions with the ls command:

SERVER:~# ls -l /dev/hda4
```
brw-rw----  1 root disk 3, 4 Sep 18  2004 /dev/hda4
```
Next we need to add to the group disk the users that will be able to write in the FAT partition. Continuing with the example, if we want that users john, peter and frank can write in the partition, then the line of the /etc/group would be like this:
```
disk:x:6:john,peter,frank
```
If we want the FAT partition be mounted automatically at boot time, then we need to add/modify in /etc/fstab the line that identify those partition so it would look something like this:
```
/dev/hda4	/win	vfat	rw,uid=0,gid=6,umask=002	0	0
```
And that's all!. The netx time the computer boots, the FAT partition will be mounted in the directory that we specify in /etc/fstab (in this example the directory specified was /win), and the users belonging to the group disk will have reading and writing permissions on it.

The latest version of this document is available at: http://nediam.com.mx/en/tips/fat_partitions.php