First let me say so far I LOVE Suse. I had installed Suse via FTP and had no issues. Got the Pro DVD, installed it, and had one issue. Thats pretty good I think for a *nix distro. All my hardware works, it is fast, looks good (using KDE). When I did the clean install from the DVD, I lost the ability to navigate my Windows partition. I did some searching and came up with this thread

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=201743

with these instructions:

Then edit the entry in /etc/fstab

Change from:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults 0 0
To:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat rw,auto,umask=0000,users,exec 0 0
or
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,umask=0000 0 0


I followed the instructions and got my etc/fstab to look like this:

/dev/hdb5 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hdb6 /home reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/hda7 swap swap pri=42 0 0
/dev/hdb3 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/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom 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
/dev/hda5 /windows/d vfat rw,auto,umask=0000,users,exec 0 0



My Problem is under "my computer" it no longer shows "hard disk" which had the Suse partition, and the "windows" drive, though now it is there and I can write to it, when you click on it only gives you the option to open it with Kwrite as it thinks it is a text file. I can access the windows drive through Konquerer and all is good, and I was able to point Limewire to my shared folder on my Windows partition. Here is my FSTAB, which is the only thing I have edited. BTW, before I found this thread, I tried the Suse partition tool under YAST and it didn't seem to do anything, but then again I didn't really completely understand what I was doing.

How do I get the "hard disk" under "my computer" to show a valid "windows" drive and a valid "suse" drive as it did before? I also have two other windows partitions that are NTFS that don't show in FSTAB at all. Can I manually add those taking the partition info from the partition tool in Yast? Is this how it should look:

/dev/hda1 /windows/c HPFS/NTFS defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /windows/e HPFS/NTFS defaults 0 0

Thanks in advance for any help.

Click with the right mouse button on the drives representing your suse and windows partition and select "Properties"
from the fly-out meny.

Click on the "General" Tab. What you see under "Location" (there shall be a path) ?
Click on the "Device" Tab (Filed "Device" and "Mount Point")
Click on the "Permisson" Tab. What do you see there ?

You can mount the windows partitions editing the fstab (edit is as root).
The entries should look like:

/dev/hda1 /windows/c ntfs ro,noauto,umask=0222,users,exec 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /windows/e ntfs ro,noauto,umask=0222,users,exec 0 0

Do not forget to check if there is a directory /windows/c and /windows/e
Create those directories if they aren't there yet.

The option: noauto means that those partitions are not mounted at boot. If you want them
to be mounted automatically at boot, then remove noauto.

ro means that we mount the ntfs partitions read only. (umask=0222 also means no write access, but anyone can read).
This is due to the fact, that writing to a NTFS partition from Linux is not a very good idea at this time.

You may also add a drive icon for those and actually any partition, to your desktop by clicking the right mouse button
anywhere on an empty space of your desktop. A Fly out menu appears. Select
Create New->Device->Hard Disc Drive
Give a name for the Device in the Dialog displayed underr the General Tab.
In the Device Tab you can select the drive from the drop-down list entitled "device:"
The mount Point and the partition will be taken from the fstab.
Press then the "OK" Button.

In the "My Computer" on the Desktop, I try to create a new device and I get an error message that says "writing to drives is not supported" and the "windows" icon doesn't have the tabs you mentioned, only a "general" tab and a "permissions" tab. There is also not an option to delete it when I right click on it. I was able to add the Hard Disc on the Desktop itself , I created one for my Suse partition, and one for my windows partition and they work fine. I can access, read and write to those partitions.

I guess right now its more of an annoyance than anything that I want the "My Computer" to show the partitions correctly and not have broken links.

Thanks for the help so far!

No Problem. I can help you ro solve the annoying thing :-))

Actualy the Drive Icons are respresenting, hmmm let's call them, description files.
Those files are located in the directory
/dev/shm/Desktop

In order to edit them you need to have root access. Since I am using vi I just open a console and su to root
If you prefear a GUI editor you may consider to login into KDE or GNOME as root.

If you right click on an Drive-Icon in "My Computer" and select properties you will see in the general tab a file name.
So for my Windows F drive I get, e.g.: hdb1.desktop
if you
ls /dev/shm/Desktop

you will see there also a file named exactly as the name you have seen in in the general tab of the properties.
Open this file for editing.

cd /dev/shm/Desktop
vi hdb1.desktop

(you may use instead of vi your favorite editor)

You will see something like:
............................................. snip ................................
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Icon=hdd_win_unmount
UnmountIcon=hdd_win_unmount
Type=FSDevice
MountPoint=/windows/f
Dev=/dev/hdb1
ReadOnly=false

Name=Windows
Comment=Mount and browse a Windows filesystem
Comment[de]=Ein Windows Dateisystem mounten und öffnen
Comment[cs]=Pøipojení a prohlí¾ení systému souborù
Comment[hu]=Windowsos fájlrendszer csatolása és böngészése
................................................ snap .......................................

You need to enter the correct values for the MountPoint if you have changed it and save the file.

BTW: "My Computer" is nothing else then the Konqueror Browser opened for URL:
drives:/

How can you create new drives ?

Copy one existing under another name in the same directory (you have to do it as root) and edit the target

e.g.
cd /dev/shm/Desktop
cp hdb1.desktop mydisk.desktop
vi mydisk.desktop

I couldn't quite get that to work, but going off the new found knowledge you imparted, I created a new link to url, pointed it to the /dev/shm/desktop/ location, once on the desktop I opened the new link, right click, add >device>hard disc, set up the direction it was pointing, renamed it Windows. Did the same thing again and renamed it Suse. Verified it worked, deleted the old "My Computer", renamed the new link "my computer", changed the icon to be that of a computer monitor and all was well.

Thanks a million for your help in this and other threads!

Tthat's exactly how I have "work-arounded" the default "My Computer". By creating a Folder on the Desktop and creating there
the drives links and renaming the folder to "My Computer". Of course prior that I deleted
the default SuSe My Computer Icon. Just like you!

biblefreak

You said that you got all devices working. How about the winmodem? Is it working also? I am having a problem getting winmodem to work in SuSE 9.1 personal (download version). I tried Lucent, PCTel (with Rockwell Chip), ESS, Motorola and Conexant. All of the did not work. Luckily, I have an old 33.6 kbps Rockwell external serial modem which I am using now.