Setting up Linux for more use.
 

Ok, I am a :newbie:, Now with that said, I need help, I am using a single 120 gig seagate hdd. I set up a partion for linux, got my dual boot to work fine, but while installing RH9, I wasnt able to mount windows partion with disk druid. I used partion magic 8 to allocate free space for the linux install. So what do i need to do to access my windows partion to access my music, pics and what not. :confused: The only thing holding me back on more linux use is, 1. my incredible collections of mp3s, and gaming. I have a couple of friends helping me too, but cant get the hdd to mount.

Thanks,
Mad

Try these commands in a console as root:
mkdir /mnt/winC
mount -t vfat /dev/hdxx /mnt/winC

You need to replace hdxx with whatever partition Windows is under. i.e. If its the first patition on the main disk usually its hda1.
If this works you can make it permanatley available by editing your fstab.

You might want to include the uid=xxxx or gid=xxxx options to determine which user has access to the windows partition. The permissions are set in the mount command for vfat type partitions. Look at the mount(8) man page for all the options. You could use uid=<username> rather than looking up your user id number. Creating a new group, lets call it mp3share for example would allow you to control which users can also use the partition by making these users members of the mp3share group.

One problem though is my windows partion is set up as NTFS, winders is set as hda1, I might just get a second HDD tonight, buy another seagate barracuda 120 gig to use for linux. Then copy my mp3 and pic collection to it from disk, but i still want to access my windows with linux. I will try mount -t vfat /dev/hdxx /mnt/winC tonight, i did do a mkdir /mnt/windows on my last install. This is second time I have tried Linux, so its still some getting used to. I have a couple of documents on RH and on bash commands. I will try tonight at home, and let you know.

You will need to change -t vfat too -t ntfs. Something to be wary off is writing to an NTFS partition. Since MS won't release the specs, its been reversed engineered, and writing may or may not work, and/or can damage the filesystem.

Don't mount the ntfs partition anything other then RO...... I have had to help somebody repair there NTFS partition so Windows was happy again and it wasn't pretty... but it is possible.

I got the suggestion of using "mount -t ntfs /dev/hd** /mnt/windows"
**= the partition of the ntfs file system. for example the ntfs might be on /dev/hda5 or /dev/hdb3 or /dev/hdc4, in my case being hda1.

I have some stuff to try when i get home. Work always get in the way of more useful things.

Redhat does not have support for NTFS. Before you do anything you will have to enable it. There is an RPM somewhere that will give you support to read NTFS. Google for that and install it.

Im going to dl Mandrake 9.2 tonight, it already has the updates to support NTFS. Has anyone else tried it out yet? Im running a new machine, 120 gig seagate barracuda hard drive, soyo ultimate platnium edition mobo, with 1 gig of corsair pc2700 ram, p4 2.4 w/ 533 fsb, sony cd rw, ati radeon 9500 agp 8x pro 128 meg video card. Im looking at getting a laptop now with the p4 ht with 800mghz fsb, but that is after tax returns. I do have a copy of openBSD but from what i hear, it is hard to install, so i havent tried it. But is mandrake 9.2 is a good release for linux and newer comps?

You don't need another distro just install the ntfs module

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/redhat9.html

I found this link on a search, I have a couple of friends that use Mandrake, so that is a reason why i was thinking of swithing.

Ok, I followed the directions, and it worked, YESSSSSSSS. Now to step 2, set up xmms to play mp3 format, Thanks SOOOO much for your support, with helpful pep like you all, Linux will take over more pcs and free minds.

I don't use Redhat but I think the xmms included since Redhat 8/9 does have the mp3 pluggin. Author's rights problem I think.
Well the best you can do is, uninstall the xmms included in the redhat distro and install the rpm from the xmms site.
You can download it from here http://www.xmms.org/download.php