Media player that can access a Vista partition?

Leon14344 · 06-24-2009, 08:59 PM

I have a laptop dual-booting Ubuntu linux and Vista. I have a lot of music, and since i've been using Ubuntu more than vista lately, i'd like to have a good music player.

I don't really like how rythmnbox is laid out, but it actually imports my music. I tried to use Amarok 1.4, but it won't import from my vista partition.

I have nearly 18gb of music, and the partition for Ubuntu is only 3gb. Anyone know of any other players that can import from vista's FAT32 partition?

Drakeo · 06-24-2009, 10:23 PM

sudo nautilus then passward copy from windows drive to your linux drive. it is all up to permission there is no reason why your multimedia player running in a linux environment can not see read or play from your windows partition. it is up to you to set the permission of the user to allow them to enter that partition. vista that I know uses ntfs partition and if your using gnome edit your setting so your nautilus file manager opens as a browser. then you will see on the left all your hard drive partitions you can mount.

check /media/ also
remember if it is not mounted you can't import
if you do not have permission to access the disk drive then you can't import

let your user have -> disk <- permission.
good luck

Uncle_Theodore · 06-24-2009, 10:27 PM

I don't really understand what you mean by importing your music. Amarok can play music from a vista partition just fine, provided it's mounted. Just click on Engage -> Play Media and choose your music files in the directory where the vista partition is mounted.

wabbalee · 06-25-2009, 06:23 AM

why don't you permanently mount your vista fat32 drive in Ubuntu with all the read write permissions?

here's how:
open a terminal and type:

Code:

sudo mkdir /vista

then open your /etc/fstab file with root privileges by typing:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add this line to the static section of the file: (copy paste)

Code:

/dev/sdxy  /vista vfat defaults,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=100,auto,rw,user 0 2

where x = the letter of your drive (e.g: sda, sdb, sdc, sdd..)
and y = the partition number (e.g: sda1, sdb1, sdc3..)

to find out what drive your vista partition is (in case you are not certain) open gparted to see the drives and their respective partition notations.

reboot your system and you should be able to 'see' this drive in every application in the newly created /vista folder on your system

good luck
ron.

Drakeo · 06-25-2009, 09:37 AM

well if they do not thank you I will good stuff wabbalee

tredegar · 06-25-2009, 11:33 AM

@wabbalee:
Doesn't vista use NTFS ? (I don't have a copy to test).

In which case the line in /etc/fstab needs to look like this:

Code:

/dev/sdxy  /vista ntfs-3g defaults,umask=000,uid=1000,gid=100,auto,rw,user 0 2

No need to reboot (slow, boring), just re-mount, like this:

Code:

sudo mount -a

Then configure amarok to scan for your music along the path /vista/whatever/Music in addition to /home/leon/music
"Rescan collection" and you should be good to go.

[Edit:] Copying the Music from vista to linux is a waste of disk space, as once vista is mounted, linux can just read the files from there [/Edit]

wabbalee · 06-25-2009, 07:37 PM

Thank you Drakeo and glad I could assist.

to tredegar:
you are correct, vista would most likely use ntfs by default as its 'security' features rely on it, these are not present in FAT32, however, the OP states:

Quote:

Anyone know of any other players that can import from vista's FAT32 partition?

so that's why I did this.

and rebooting is what works for me as I don't know all the command line tricks, it also helps confirming and testing that what I did actually works the way I meant it. I am no expert, I am just starting to think that I am at advanced user level.

cheers,
Ron

Leon14344 · 06-26-2009, 11:25 AM

@ wabbalee:

Thanks for that. I apparently made a mistake though, as vista's partition IS ntfs. I had been using my slackware laptop, and it uses EXT2. I couldn't remember which file system vista was, and knowing slack was ext2, i figured vista was FAT32. sorry about that!

i've been busy and haven't been able to do this yet, but i'll tell you how it goes. thanks everyone.

tredegar · 06-26-2009, 12:42 PM

Quote:

i'll tell you how it goes.

We look forward to your update.

wabbalee · 06-26-2009, 11:42 PM

use ntfs-3g instead of vfat in the fstab line as tredegar suggests if your vista drive is ntfs (it most likely is).

Leon14344 · 06-27-2009, 07:13 PM

it worked!

the /vista folder for some reason only shows basic system files, but i found everything in /media/HDD1 . amarok has registered every file, and t works well.

The only thing i miss is that amarok doesn't sort by album artist like Zune did, and instead sorts by song artist. but it's alright, i'm just glad to be able to get it all.

thanks everyone.

tredegar · 06-28-2009, 05:10 AM

Quote:

it worked!

It's linix

Quote:

The only thing i miss is that amarok doesn't sort by album artist like Zune did

Top left corner of Amarok is a Funnel icon and "Group By"

Click it -> Lots of ways to sort your music

wabbalee · 06-28-2009, 11:21 PM

Quote:

the /vista folder for some reason only shows basic system files, but i found everything in /media/HDD1

I wonder what drive notation have you used in your fstab line for your vista partition?

could you give us an output of this command please?

Code:

sudo parted /dev/sda print

if I do this on my Ubuntu 9.04 laptop I get this:

Code:

Model: ATA ST9160821A (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 160GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  12.6GB  12.6GB  primary   ext4
 2      12.6GB  22.0GB  9434MB  primary   ntfs         boot
 3      22.0GB  23.1GB  1045MB  primary   linux-swap
 4      23.1GB  160GB   137GB   extended
 6      23.1GB  35.7GB  12.6GB  logical   ext2
 5      35.7GB  160GB   124GB   logical   fat32

Leon14344 · 06-29-2009, 03:06 PM

i will once i get access to my laptop tomorrow night. i'm not at home, where it is.

Leon14344 · 06-30-2009, 05:00 PM

alright, here's what I output:

Code:

Model: ATA WDC WD2500BEVS-2 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
 1      32.3kB  7966MB  7966MB  primary   ntfs         boot 
 3      7970MB  15.8GB  7855MB  extended                    
 5      7970MB  15.4GB  7469MB  logical   ext3              
 6      15.4GB  15.8GB  387MB   logical   linux-swap        
 2      15.8GB  250GB   234GB   primary   ntfs

and according to Gparted, 2 is mounted at /media/HDD1 and 1 is at /vista.