Mounting help
 

I just installed Mandrake 9.1 on my computer and I am a complete newbie to Linux. I have two other windows partitions, C: and D:. C: is where windows is installed and D: is for storage. Both are in NTFS. How do I view those drives through Linux? I foudn some stuff on mounting.

Mara said:
" Let's say you've got Windows (FAT32) partition - /dev/hda1. To mount it, create /mnt/windows (command: 'mkdir /mnt/windows') directory (or similar) and run
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows
Now you can access your Windows files in /mnt/windows."

I can't seem to get the first command to work in the terminal. It gives me this message when i type it in.
"mkdir: cannot create directory `/mnt/windows': Permission denied"

if you did a default install of mandrake then it should have created the directories in the /mnt and mounted the partitions at boot time. so

just goto /mnt directory and look for the direcotries.


you were not root i guess when you tried to make the directory. /mnt is owned by root

You have to be root. Try this in an x terminal first:Now you are in "god" mode and can do anything as long as enough system is left to carry out the commands. :D

:tisk: Don't try rm -R /

right, to get root in the terminal, type:

su, then enter
then your root password, then press enter

then try those steps again

manthram was right, it did mount it automatically. There is a problem though. I have two partitions, C: and D:. C: has windows on it and D: has mp3s, movies and stuff. I can see the C: fine but I can't seem to see the D:.

here is what's in /mnt
/mnt
+cdrom
+cdrom2
+floppy
+win_c
win_c2
win_d

win_c has my windows xp on it. win_c2 is blank. win_d is blank. One of those folders I should see all my mp3s and movies and stuff. Is there a way to unmount the win_c2 and win_d and then remount it?

Use diskdrake, as root. Do as it says and backup your /etc/fstab file first. :)

"mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows" wont work for ntfs ;)

Linux can only read NTFS partitions at the moment, writing to them is unstable. Blame Microsoft. Use a FAT32 partition as a go-between to write to windows.

I read several replies, but this works for me and also gets rid of the "must be root" to mount and read ntfs drive.

make a directory in /mnt as the mount point, I use xp on mine. Then add the next line to /etc/fstab.

/dev/hda1 /mnt/xp ntfs ro,users,umask=022 0 0

You will need to also change the /dev/hda1 to whatever your partition for ntfs is.

Hope this helps.......

It may help to put a text file (while in windows) saying drive c, drive d, etc. as Windows uses some strange scheme if drives have multiple partitions on the same drive. They won't be c=/dev/hda1, d=/dev/hda2, etc. That threw me for a loop for a long time figuring that out.