I am very new to Linux. I have recently installed Redhat 7.1 on a dual boot machine with Win2k. How can I mount my NTFS drives from Redhat? I understand that this may involve in recompiling the Kernel, but I'm not sure that I am advanced enough to handle that. Can someone help me?

recompiling the kernel is not nearly as scary as it sound. go into the /usr/src/linux-2.x.x directory with xterm and type "make xconfig" - this will just give you an idea of what you need to know to compile a kernel. it's not really very complicated - i think that www.linuxdoc.org gives more explicit instructions.

you can only mount NTFS in read-only mode. so i guess thats pretty useless

i can mount my 2k ntfs in mandrake no probs

but i cant automount yet because i am not too sure about the syntax in fstab

but i do this
create a dir in /mnt called 2k
/mnt/2k is there

then

mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/2k

or the other way round not too sure but it works

im not too sure about writing to the partition but i have a fat 32 partition for passing stuff to and from linux and 2k anyway

gary8744,

Hello. As isajera said, you can recompile the kernel to include NTFS support. Be sure to follow the howto's carefully. If you use make xconfig, the NTFS support is (I believe) in the filesystems section. Select yes or m (module) next to the option for NTFS support. Of course, select all the other options you want the kernel to have. If you don't have the linux source in /usr/src, you will need to install the kernel-source package located on the CD 2 with you RH Linux 7.1 distro. NOTE: the NTFS driver for the kernel provides only read-only support. The read/write driver is (I hear) very dangerous.

Hope this helps.

Lazlo

I located a site that has pre-built RPM's for 7.3 and 8.0 versions of RH.

And yes.... this is read-only. IMHO, this is not the "piece of junk" that others may think, as it makes it convenient for me to pass things between my 2k partition and the RH installation.

Note: I have just installed the 2.4.18-14 (base version) kernel module for NTFS support and it works like a champ.

Good side: It is a breeze to install, and the instructions are remarkably lucid and complete.

Additionally, if you have the GUI installed, all you have to do is copy the RPM's to someplace in /var (I created a /var/downloads directory for just this reason!), and double-click on it from within Nautilus to install it.

Bad side: The RPM's are *VERSION SPECIFIC* to the kernel you're running, which means, if you update the kernel (using up2date, or whatever), you have to -uninstall- the original kernel module RPM, and then get the new kernel module RPM to install.

IMHO, this (though pitsy) is not dreadful, as I do not spend most of my time installing kernel updates ;-)

The Red Hat page is located at:

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/redhat.html

Enjoy!

Jim