I’ve recently purchased a usb stick which I will be using to share data between me and my colleagues.
I’d like to format it as ext3, but I know this will cause trouble because for instance Mac OS X has troubles mounting that.
The problem is that any other FS I’ve used before (except for ext2 or ext4) seems to screw up the executable bit on files that have been on it.
E.g. I put up a normal non-executable pdf file on the stick, I take it off again and suddenly it’s executable (e.i. the executable permission is enabled).
I don’t like these kinds of trickeries. What filesystem should I use? Or is this problem not FS-related?
Answers:
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Method 1
According to Universal Disk Format – Wikipedia, UDF may work: it has POSIX-style permissions, is readable by Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP and up, and is writable by Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Vista and up.
Method 2
I think in this case you are very much limited to FAT.
Your problem with the executable bit is due to the fact that FAT does not support that sort of permissions which is very much a POSIX things. Since UNIX system work on that sort of file permissions, when you mount a FS which doesn’t support it, it will get emulated. indeed by default a VFAT file system mounted on linux will have all files and directory appear as 777, but it doesn’t mean that there is an actual executable bit set on the FS.
Method 3
UDF is a solution.
However, reformatting with ANY filesystem will prematurely wear your device. See How to Damage a FLASH Storage Device, Flash Memory and others.
See also this SD Formatter 3.1 for SD/SDHC/SDXC.
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0