moved my question here from Newcomers forum - mount ntfs volumes in Debian Etch 4.0

I asked this question in my greeting post on the Member Inro forum.

I have a single 120gig hard drive, partitioned thusly:

Label "System" 20gig NTFS for Windows XP Pro 64 Bit
Label "Data" 40gig NTFS for all my data files

I used Norton Partition Magic 8.0 to create an ext3 partition and a swap partition in the remaining space on the drive

I used a Debian 4.0 Etch installation DVD from Linux Magazine to install. It apparently chose the amd64 version to install with no prompting.

All deskops (I set up 3 users) show System and Data when I click the Places>Computer menu bar item. I can drag them out onto the desktop but
when I try to open them I get this error

Unable to mount selected volume.

libhal-storagec 1401: info: called libhal_free_dbus_error but dbus error was not set.
process 1358: applications mustt not close shared connections -
see dbus_connection_close() docs. this is a bug in the application

error: device /dev/sda5 is not removable
error: could not execute pmount


I received a reply from leonscape in MemberIntro, quoted here:

Originally Posted by leonscape mounting ntfs just for reading in Linux is quite easy su to root username@machine: ~$ su Password: enter root password although nothing shows up machine: /home/username# mkdir /mnt/windows machine: /home/username# mount -t ntfs /dev/hdxx /mnt/windows machine: /home/username# cd /mnt/windows machine: /mnt/windows# ls CONFIG.SYS MSDOS.SYS ntldr Program Files System Volume Information WINDOWS AUTOEXEC.BAT Inetpub MSOCache NVIDIA temp boot.ini Documents and Settings IO.SYS NTDETECT.COM pagefile.sys RECYCLER to make it permanent, add the line to /etc/fstab /dev/hdxx /mnt/windows ntfs users,auto,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0 /dev/hdxx should be set to the correct partition of course.

I added this line to /etc/fstab as root:

dev/sda5 /media/sda5 ntfs,users,auto,uid=000,gid=1000 0 0

(with tabs between the items as appropriate-not visible in this post?) and entered the code quoted above in a terminal window to mount it

However, I still get the same error.

I did some checking.

In /dev, I only see HDC and HDD. I am not sure which partitions these refer to, but I am guessing thesese are my EXT# and SWAP partitions

In /mnt I see my Data directory (the one I created) but it is empty.

I don't understand why all my partitions don't appear in /dev

I don't understand why one place refers to HDx and the other to SDx.

Any help, please?

/sd? Under new kernels include almost all block devices. Under older kernels, these were only SCSI, SATA, and USB devices. /hd? handled ATA.

What does "ls /dev/[sh]d*" show?

I added this line to /etc/fstab as root: dev/sda5 /media/sda5 ntfs,users,auto,uid=000,gid=1000 0 0 (with tabs between the items as appropriate-not visible in this post?) and entered the code quoted above in a terminal window to mount it However, I still get the same error. I did some checking. In /dev, I only see HDC and HDD. I am not sure which partitions these refer to, but I am guessing thesese are my EXT# and SWAP partitions In /mnt I see my Data directory (the one I created) but it is empty.

The line you put in /etc/fstab has partition sda5 mounted in /media/sda5 yet you say you made a mount point in /mnt. If you have/created a directory called /media/sda5, that's where your files should be. If not, change that section of the line highlighted above to the mount point you created in /mnt.
If you type this command in a terminal: fdisk -l, you would get a list of all drives and their partitions, if it has the Windows partition as hda, you must change the first part of that line in /etc/fstab to /dev/hdaX, (X) being the appropriate partition. If the output of the fdisk -l command has the partition you want to mount as /dev/sda5, then leave it as is. Just make sure it matches what the fdisk -l command shows.

dev/sda5 /media/sda5 ntfs,users,auto,uid=000,gid=1000 0 0

I never use a specific UID with Debian, below is the line Debian set up for me a year ago in read only mode:

/dev/sda3       /mnt/data       ntfs umask=0,nls=utf8,ro        0       0

I didn't mention that my hard drive is an SATA device. Sorry. Your question

what does 'ls /dev/[sh]d* show?'

threw me at first.

I typed it in exactly from your post and of course I got

ls: /dev/[sh]d*: no such file or directory

It took me a moment or two to realize that the brackets might indicate "s OR d".

ls dev/hd* returns hdc hdd hpet

ls /dev/sd* returns sda sda1 sd2 sda3 sda5 sda6 snapshot sndstat stderr stdin stdout

Armed with this information (thank you!) I can see in /etc/fstab that sda3 is my ext3 partition and sda6 is my swap partition

So I'm left with sda1 sda2 sda5 as candidates for my Windows partitions. I'm guessing sda refers to the entire hard drive, correct?

Thank you Junior Hacker!

I modified the line in /etc/fstab as you suggested and now I have RO access to my Data partition.

If you want read/write access to the data partition, install ntfs-3g with apt or synaptic or aptitude. There should be a couple other files needed as dependencies which apt will also install. Then change the line in /etc/fstab to look like this one I use now:

/dev/sda3	/data		ntfs-3g	defaults	0	0