Troubles with Mandrake linux

[VeX]

Hy!
Like many others windows i got tired of stupid bill gates and his half-finished software which is like a swiss cheese, full of holes. So i decided to install Mandrake 10.
And now i have troubles accesing the files that are located on the NTFS formated partitions. Is that even possible? I have about 200 gigabytes of movies and music on that partitions, so it's a bummer if i can't play them. My friend said that i can acces them by modifying the linux Kernel, but i'm new at linux so i dont know how to do that. Can anyone please help me?? And is the mandrake best choice for beginers? Or is RedHat better choice (and can radhat acces ntfs by defoult)??
Thanx!!

[llbbl]

Linux likes FAT32 better. It is too bad you couldn't move all the movies over to a FaT32 partition before installing Linux. I guess you could do it after the fact with Partition Magic or something. You can get NTFS working, but I don't think will be easy.

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/index.html

[llbbl]

You will have to reinstall windows I believe if you want to move the files over to FAT32.

[llbbl]

there is very poor ntfs write support because there is NO DOCUMENTATION FOR NTFS. Why? Because Microsoft wrote it, and don't want other people to be able to use it. Do you really think it would be in the state it was if people had clear instructions on how the file system works???

Here I found this on why NTFS isn't supported in Linux. MS strikes again!!

[VeX]

Well, i left win XP still on, so i can convert partitions to fat32, but is fat32 slower and worse than ntfs in case that i remain using XP?
And i don't even know even how to acces the drives! There's only something root/ something... So where are drives in that? Linux is definately better than windows, but when it comes to user friendlynes, microsoft wins...
btw, thanks for the link!

[llbbl]

Project implements the first full read/write free access to NTFS disk drives. You can mount your Microsoft Windows NT, 200x or XP partition as a transparently accessible volume for your GNU/Linux.

This compatibility was achieved in the Wine way by using the original Microsoft Windows ntfs.sys driver. It emulates the required subsystems of the Microsoft Windows kernel by reusing one of the original ntoskrnl.exe, ReactOS parts, or this project's own reimplementations, on a case by case basis. Project includes the first open source MS-Windows kernel API for Free operating systems. Involvement of the original driver files was chosen to achieve the best and unprecedented filesystem compatibility and safety.

As opposed to other projects this is currently the only software supporting the full read/write access including the possibility to create/delete files, modify directories etc.

http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

[llbbl]

Details on the implementation's internals are closed, so third-party vendors have a difficult time providing tools to handle NTFS. Currently, the Linux kernel includes a module which makes it possible to read NTFS partitions; however the general complexity of the filesystem and inadequate developer resources, both in time and persons, have delayed the addition of full write support. As a workaround, a project called Captive NTFS (http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/) allows access to the NTFS by providing the operating system with an interface to the ntfs.sys driver which already exists on most NTFS partitions (and on all Windows NT installations). Though this provides slow read/write support, a few people have reported data loss .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS

[llbbl]

open up /etc/fstab... it should look a bit like this...



/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0


add a new line to mount your fat 32 partiton, like this...


/dev/hda2 /mnt/fat32 vfat defaults 0 0


where /dev/hda2 id your fat32 partition, and /mnt/fat32 is where you want to mount it to.

bear in mind that you will need to be root to access the partition. if you want to access it as another user aswell, you need to set permissions aswell.

to set the drive read/writeable by another user, you need to find their uid (user id)


/dev/hda2 /mnt/fat32 vfat defaults rw,uid=1000 0 0


where 1000 is the uid of the user you want to have read/write access.

TAKEN FROM:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/topic-2521.html

[llbbl]

Mounting a Drive/Partition in Linux
Norman Jordan
June 1, 2003 Console Software/ Administrative Tools
Applies to Linux

Before you will begin, you will need to be running a kernel with support for the filesystem type of the drive/partition you are trying to mount.

1. Figure out what the"/dev" entry is for the drive or partition that you are trying to mount is.
The first floppy drive is"/dev/fd0".
A windows"C:" drive is usually"/dev/hda1".
/dev/hda => primary master
/dev/hdb => primary slave
/dev/hdc => secondary master
/dev/hdd => secondary slave
2. Figure out what the filesystem is of the desired drive/partition.
Windows filesystems are usually vfat or msdos.
Linux filesystems are usually ext2.
3. Figure out where you will mount the drive/partition to. You should use an empty directory. You can create one for this purpose if you want.
4. Now mount the drive or partition using the mount command.
mount -t [filesystem_type] [device] [directory]
[filesystem_type] is the filesystem type of the drive or partition that you are trying to mount.
[device] is the"/dev" entry corresponding to the drive or partion that you are trying to mount.
[directory] is the directory that you are mounting the drive/partition to.
eg. To mount the first partition (a FAT32 partition) on the first (primary master) hard drive as the directory /mnt
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt -t vfat
5. If you were able to successfully mount the drive, then you may want to add it to"/etc/fstab", so that it could be mounted when you boot up. Also if there is an entry in"/etc/fstab" for the drive/partition, then you can mount it with the following syntax.
mount [name]
[name] is either the"/dev" entry that you are trying to mount, or the directory that you are mounting it to.
6. If you are adding an entry to"/etc/fstab", then add a line like this:
[device] [directory] [filesystem_type] [mntops] 0 [pass_no]
[device] is the"/dev" entry that you chose above.
[directory] is the directory that you are mounting the drive/partion to.
[filesystem_type] is the filesystem type that you chose above.
[mntops] can be"auto", meaning that the drive will be mounted when you boot up or it can be"noauto", meaning that the drive will not be mounted when you boot up.
[pass_no] should be"1" for the partition that contains"/", it should be"2" for other Linux drives/partitions, and it should be"0" for all other drives/partitions.
ex. /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy ext2 noauto 0 0

You should unmount any drives/partitions that you mounted manually. You can do this with the umount command.
umount [device]
[device] is the"/dev" entry that you mounted.

http://rtfm.dyndns.info/tips/2003/06/01/16.shtml

[llbbl]

Contents

1. Mounting Windows FAT16/FAT32 and NTFS partitions on Linux

Mounting Windows FAT16/FAT32 and NTFS partitions on Linux

(taken from "Dual Boot Systems - A series of Articles by James Attard.")

If you want to access your Win95/98 partition (VFAT filesystem) from Linux, do the following as root (/c reminds me of the C: drive letter, you may call the directory whatever you'd like):

1. Create the mount point

% mkdir /c
% chmod a+rw /c

2. Mount the drive manually to make sure it works.
Note: see article on Windows/Linux partition naming for information about which Windows drive letter corresponds to which Linux device name.

% mount /dev/hda1 /c -t vfat

If there were no error messages, quickly browse around /c and make sure everything looks right.

3. If that worked, you can make it easier or automatic to mount by adding the following line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda1 /c vfat noauto,user 0 2

4. With step 3 completed, you can now use the following command to mount the Win98 partition (this is how my machine is set up):

%mount /c

5. If you want to have /c mounted automatically at boot time, change the "noauto" in step 3 to "auto".

Now I can use free space on the Windows partition for Linux stuff as well. One thing to be careful of is that, unlike Unix, the VFAT file system is not case-sensitive: "README" and "readme" are the same file. And, of course, the performance of VFAT is pretty bad compared to ext2fs. Another difference is that FAT32 partitions know nothing about file-owners or permissions.

If you use Redhat, this procedure does not work as is, with WinXP (and win 2000 i think), since you will often get this message: mount: fs type ntfs not supported by kernel

To deal with this problem you need to rebuild the kernel with ntfs enabled. I won't be the last to tell you that you are risking the corruption of your ntfs partition especially if you enable read/write on the partition. If you are not experienced in tweaking your kernel, you can follow the steps below (I tried it with Red Hat 7.3):

# cd /usr/src/linux-2.4
# make menuconfig
(active <M> to "File systems/NTFS file system support (read only)",
exit&save)
# make modules SUBDIRS=fs/ntfs
# make modules_install SUBDIRS=fs/ntfs
# insmod /lib/modules/2.4.18-3custom/kernel/fs/ntfs/ntfs.o

Now mount your nt-filesystem as explained in steps 1-5 above. This procedure applies to all NTFS filesystems.

NB: I emphasize again that the "NTFS not supported" error comes around with Redhat distros. I don't know whether other distros such as Mandrake or Debian suppost NTFS immediately. In such case, just follow steps 1-5 directly.

Hope it helps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Attard
aka MadviP
21/02/2003
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://linux.org.mt/article/winmount

[VeX]

Thanks very much!! I'll try this in the morning, and say how it worked!

[VeX]

Nothing seems to work... I gues Bill Gates wins this round... :(