gedit error "Could not create a backup file" when trying to save a file in a VFAT partition

[Ari]

Binary package hint: gedit

I have an edgy (final) fresh install. It detected and mounts on boot my FAT32 drive that I share with windows.

I can create and delete files in this partition with no problems with all applications including gedit itself.

The problem is, when I try to save the new file again (or to save a file just opened and modified), gedit always gives me an error message:

Could not create a backup file while saving /home/ariel/Desktop/MyFolder/mynewtextfile.txt

It looks like the backup filename has something in it that is not supported in a vfat partition, or there is some problem with the way ubuntu sets the default permissions

In any case, this is annoying. It happened to me previously with Dapper in another machine. Hopefully this can get fixed soon!

Note: being a vfat partition, the user:group is set now set to root:root (initially, the group was plugdev but I changed that to see if it fixed my problem; it didn't help at all).

My current fstab entry is:

UUID=d5628904-b3cf-4aaa-ae5b-5adb62952fbd
/media/sda6 vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000,user 0 0

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

I'm confirming this after reproducing it with a clean loop mounted image - vim works without an error, but gedit gives this error.

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

I've figured out the problem, and added a description of it to the upstream bug. For now, you can get around the issue by mounting with the option umask=(YOUR_USER_NUMBER) instead of umask=000 (probably umask=1000).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for the bug and for the upstream pointer

[Ari (ari-reads)]

Hi Constantine, first thanks a lot for your quick response!

On umask: It doesn't look like that option will accept a user number... it seems to be a permission mask for filesystems that don't support builtin unix permissions

 umask: octal file permissions

You can change permissions using the parameter umask. But be aware that it must be the bitmask of permissions that are not present for the mountpoint. It is an octal number, formed like this:

    * character '0': Indicates that this is an octal number, not decimal.
    * first digit: owner user permissions
    * second digit: owner group permissions
    * third digit: world permissions (every other user on the system)

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

My apologies - I meant uid, not umask.

Ari wrote:
> Hi Constantine, first thanks a lot for your quick response!
>
> On umask: It doesn't look like that option will accept a user number...
> it seems to be a permission mask for filesystems that don't support
> builtin unix permissions
>
>
> umask: octal file permissions
>
> You can change permissions using the parameter umask. But be aware that
> it must be the bitmask of permissions that are not present for the
> mountpoint. It is an octal number, formed like this:
>
> * character '0': Indicates that this is an octal number, not decimal.
> * first digit: owner user permissions
> * second digit: owner group permissions
> * third digit: world permissions (every other user on the system)
>
>

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

This bug is still present in gEdit 2.18.0 gnome 2.18.0.

[markba (mark-baaijens)]

I can confirm this on Edgy and Feisty.
In my case, I connect to a Samba share through a mount:
mount -t smbfs -o lfs,fmask=0777,dmask=0777,codepage=cp850,iocharset=utf8 //lin01/public /media/lin01-public

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

Still present in gEdit 2.19.3 (current August version in Ubuntu 7.10)

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

It seems that the backup-writing code has been rewritten (to begin with, it's now in gedit-local-...). This error no longer occurs in hardy, with 2.22, and was probably fixed in even earlier versions.