Hi,

I'm having a few problems accessing Hard Disks under Suse Linux 9.1, and would be grateful for a few pointers.

First my system :

Dual boot windows XP / Suse Linux 9.1 Pro
2x IDE Drives (1x 80Gb - (40Gb Windows, 40Gb Linux); 1x 160Gb NTFS Partition)
1x SATA Drive (160Gb NTFS)
1x CD Reader
1x DVD/CD Burner
1Gb Ram

Linux will not see the 2x 160Gb drives.

My Background : I'm quite new to Linux, and have a very, very basic understanding/experience with Unix. I'm a long time Windows user trying to switch completely to Linux.

I've searched extensively through YaST, and cannot find anything that looks like it will mount new drives. I know about the /etc/fstab file, but i've heard that manually editing this file can cause problems for YaST.

What i would really like to find is a step by step guide on how to use YaST to find and install these drives.

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers,

Greebo.

Hi,

Maybe I misunderstand, but I see 6 devices (4 HD's, a CD and a DVD).
Normally a PC can only handle a maximum of 4 devices (2 on either ide channel)

Are you using an IDE extension card or are you actually talking about partitions instead of devices?

Tell us a bit more.

Hi,

Sorry if i wasn't clear.

1x 80Gb IDE Hard drive, paritioned as 40Gb (Windows) and 40Gb Linux
1x 160Gb IDE Hard Drive NTFS
1x 160Gb SATA Hard Drive NTFS.

So only 3 HD's. Then of course the CD and DVD are IDE devices, so that makes 4 IDE devices, and 1 SATA.

Linux sees everything *except* the two 160Gb drives.

Trying to use YaST after the brain washing Windows gives you is not easy for me, but i'm getting there slowly.

Anyway, hope this clarifies things, and thanks for the quick reply!

Cheers,

Greebo

Hi,

There are still 5 devices, which still is one too many But besides that.

The 2 HD's that don't show up have a NTFS filesystem. Don't know if this type of filesystem is included (kernel) by default for SuSe 9.1 Pro (I think it is, but I'm not 100% sure).

The problem could also be related to your fstab file (could you post it?). And although it's supposed to be 'unsafe' to edit this file when using Yast: You migth need to.

Also, does yast show the 2 hd's? (yast -> hardware -> hardware information)

Hi,

Yes, there are still 5 devices, but my motherboard will support 4x IDE and 2x SATA devices, along with 2 other connectors for a RAID0/1 array, which isn't used.... yet (I have plans, but no cash!)

I'm at work at the moment, so i can't post the fstab file, but i will do when i get home later.

When i do yast -> hardware -> hardware information it does show the drives. I think! I need to check this when i get home as well, but i'm sure i found this yesterday in my cruise through YaST!

I'm also fairly sure NTSF is supported under 9.1 Pro.

Cheers,

Greebo

There's no problem with there being five devices. You'll need SCSI support enabled for the SATA drive tho.

When you say it's not seeing them, do you mean it's not mounting them for you on bootup, or that they're completely not there?

If you want them auto-mounted on boot, you HAVE to edit the fstab - that's all there is to it.

If not, run 'dmesg' and look for the hard drive information. I suspect it's found them all, just hasn't mounted them anywhere.

Hi,

This is where my knowledge of linux/unix starts to get thin.

>You'll need SCSI support enabled for the SATA drive tho.

ok. Makes sense, but how do i do this? Is there an option in YaST somewhere?

> If you want them auto-mounted on boot, you HAVE to edit the fstab

ok. I can understand that as well, and i can edit the file no problem. My only concern was upsetting YaST and breaking something else. I also would have thought you could do this through YaST?

> If not, run 'dmesg' and look for the hard drive information. I suspect it's found them all, just hasn't mounted them anywhere.

I suspect that as well, since yast -> hardware -> hardware information seemed to show all the drives. I'm just not sure how to do this. fstab makes sense though.

At least i've got plenty to keep me busy tonight Linux is fun, and forums like this are so much help.

Thanks,

Greebo

SCSI support is a kernel issue. If you have a generic kernel, it probably has it already. Especially since you appear able to detect the drive.

I believe YaST can be used to update the fstab, but I don't use it, so can't give you any specifics I'm afraid. . .

FYI, and you probably know, but Linux doesn't handle NTFS well. It can read it, but any attempts at adding write abilties are dodgy. There are a couple programs out there that will allow you to write to NTFS (i'm a newbie too and don't remember their names - Knoppix has one), but in my use, it didn't work too well and corrupted the files I was writing. I personally wouldn't try to write to NTFS with Linux, but if you do, good luck and back up everything.

Hi,

Thanks for the information. I was aware that this might be a problem, but not such a large one.

I would be interested to hear how anyone else with a dual boot system has their drives formatted. I need an NTFS partition on at least one drive because of the maximum file size limitation under FAT32.

Cheers,

Greebo

There are some utitilites that allow windows to access Linux paritions. . .

Hi,

ok, here is my fstab file. As suspected the drives are not listed :

/dev/hde3 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hde1 /windows/C vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/hde2 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/dvdram /media/dvdram subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0

The two drives missing show up under YaST as /dev/hda (160Gb SATA) and /dev/hdf (160Gb IDE)

I have *no idea* at the moment what i should enter into fstab to make these drives visible.

Cheers,

Greebo

Hi,

Knowing that hda and hdf are missing is good, but you also need to know the partition layout of those disks.

fdisk -l /dev/hda (same for hdf) will show you this layout, you need to know which 'partition' has the ntfs flag, which can be found under the 'System' tag.
Should be something like /dev/hda1 (the number being the important part). Don't know how the disks are partitioned, but there could be more then one (ntfs)partiton on one disk.

For every ntfs partition you find you need to do a few things:

1) create an unique mountpoint
2) create an entry in the fstab file
3) mount new partition

Assuming that you wil find 2 ntfs partitions, one on each disk, called /dev/hda1 and /dev/hdf1. As root do these steps:

Create 2 mountpoints:
mkdir /mnt/ntfs_01 /mnt/ntfs_02

Add these fstab entries:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/ntfs_01 ntfs users,owner,ro,umask=0002 0 0
/dev/hdf1 /mnt/ntfs_02 ntfs users,owner,ro,umask=0002 0 0

Mount disks:
mount -a

If all went well your partitions are mounted (df -h to check).

A few pointers: The ntfs partitions are mounted read only (the ro entries in the fstab lines). I don't know if write support is enabled by default in your kernel and/or if you want to use it. You could change them to rw, but be carefull with ntfs write support.

My choosen mountpoints could be anything you like, as long as they are unique. Looking at your fstab, it could be your windows D and E drive, so creating /windows/D and /windows/E is legal (if they don't already excist). Change the fstab lines accordingly (/mnt/ntfs_0x becomming /windows/X).

I see the iocharset=utf8 setting in your fstab for the vfat fs. If you have problems with funny charachters in your filenames on the ntfs partitions, you could try adding this option (iocharset=utf8) to the ntfs lines in your fstab:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/ntfs_01 ntfs users,owner,ro,umask=0002,iocharset=utf8 0 0
Try without it first.

If anything is not clear, just ask.

can anyone help me doing this?
[root@linux root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 9834 78887182+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 9835 9964 1044225 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/hdc: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 14 3649 29206170 8e Linux LVM
[root@linux root]# mount /dev/hdc2 mnt/archivos
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

i dont know how to specify the fie system type

thanx

druuna:

just to say thanks for ur advice. been looking round for a way to mount my ntfs partition and getting nowhere (I'm only 1 week into linux so it's all a bit confusing at the moment). saw ur post, followed the instructions and now it works. minter.

thanks again : )