RedHat 8.0 mount problem
 

I just installed RedHat 8.0 on my wife's computer. It didn't automatically mount her Windows 98 partitions like Mandrake did when I installed it on my box.

I need to mount drive E:, which is hda6, but I can't find it anywhere in the file structure. It's not listed in the /dev directory, the /mnt directory or anywhere that I can see. It's also not listed in fstab.

The only place I've found it listed so far is in the Hardware Browser.

If I bring up RedHat's disk management tool, the only drives that are listed there are the two cdroms and the floppy drive.

Is this normal behavior for RedHat 8.0 and if so, how do I mount drive E:? I'd like to get it to automount on boot because my wife is already not real crazy about messing with Linux. If she has to fool around with the command line, she just ain't gonna be booting into Linux.

I still haven't figured out how to share the internet connection between the two machines in Linux, but that's another issue.

Thanks.

yes its normal, Redhat dont mount Windows Partitions (NTFS Support isnt comoiled in the Kernel nor as modul)

for FAT write in /etc/fstab
/dev/hdaX /windows/C vfat rw,auto,gid=100,umask=7000,user,exec 0 0

the part with connection sharing , I read now: read the NAT-Howto on tldp.org

cu

adme

You can use the fdisk command to see what partitions are on your disk. As root, fdisk -l . You can then verify which partition it is... Look down the System column for fat or vfat or fat32. I don't remember which it would show up as.

To mount it, you'll need to create a mount point for it, such as /mnt/win-e . Just mkdir /mnt/win-e , then chmod a+rwx /mnt/win-e to make sure everybody has permission to use the new directory. Try mounting it with mount -t vfat /dev/hda6 /mnt/win-e . Then ls /mnt/win-e to see what's in there.

If it lists whats on the drive, you can add an entry in your /etc/fstab so it will automagic'ly mount...Then, you can make links in the home directories to allow quicker access.

you can edit /etc/fstab to add windows partion to the system

/dev/hdax /mnt/windows vfat default 0 0

hdax isthe partion for your system as you metioned hda6 it should work but do not forget to create /mnt/windows folder before mounting after that it should mount it while booting

Hey guys. Thanks for all the quick responses. Now next time she boots to Linux, I'll have to see what happens and that's when we'll separate the men from the boys. (I admit in advance that I'm one of the "boys")

Oh and I think I already read that NAT HOWTO, but maybe I need to read it again.

Anyway, I'll let ya know how the mount thing comes out.

Thanks again.

Alright, whoever heard of root NOT being able to change file permissions? :mad:

I can't BELIEVE this!!!

I mounted the E: partition and it seemed to go ok. It's visible now on /mnt/win_e and I put a link to it in my wife's home directory. That works fine too. She can access the folders on Drive E: in Windows, but she CAN'T write to any of the folders.

As root, I tried to change permissions on the drive and I can't. Here's the error message I'm getting:

chmod: Changing permissions of /mnt/win_e (requested: 0777, actual: 0755: operation not permitted)

I did just what you said above - Just mkdir /mnt/win-e , then chmod a+rwx /mnt/win-e

When I first did it on the new empty directory, I didn't get any error message, but then after I mounted the drive and realized my wife couldn't write to it, I went back in as root and saw that users didn't have permissions. So I tried to change it as root and I'm getting the above error message. I thought root could "change ANYTHING". :( :mad::jawa: :Pengy:

To make everything worse, I just tried to get online in MY Linux box and my NEW external modem which worked FINE the last time I got online doesn't seem to be initializing. It just SITS there SAYING it's initializing and nothing happens. So I was reduced to rebooting to windows to get online with my INTERNAL modem.

Man, I'm tellin' ya... I'm about ready to trash Linux. When root can't do a simple thing like change file permissions, something has to give. If root can't do it, who can, my sledge hammer?:

With the windows partition unmounted change its permissions.
Which I guess you already did.

Your /etc/fstab should be
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win-e vfat auto,user,umask=000 0 0

Which will let all users read/write to the windows partition.

Yes, I changed the permissions on /mnt/win_e before I mounted the partition to it. Is that what you mean? After I mounted the partition, it was not writeable. It was only readable.

In my fstab, I aleady have that line except I don't have umask=000. What does that mean?

My computer is almost identical to my wife's computer except that I have Mandrake 8.1 and she has RedHat 8.0. In my computer's fstab, whick Mandrake set up automatically, this is what that line looks like:

/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0

What does all that extra stuff mean.?

I dunno about the extra stuff but....
 

I have this in my RH8.0 /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs user,noauto,umask=000 0 0

(that's for NTFS)

/dev/hda6 /mnt/shared auto user,noauto 0 0

and that's for a fat32 partition that I have full control of...

Thanks everybody for the help.

I think the problem is fixed now, but I'm not exactly sure what I did.

Here's something funny I noticed when I was having the problem. When I was trying to change the permissions on the mounted drive through the Properties GUI window, it was hanging up on a certain folder in drive E: When I looked at the folder tree in Konquerer, I noticed that this folder had a Locked symbol on it and was not accessable. I went back into Windows and noticed that the name of the folder and one of the files in the folder was some kind of a French word with strange accent marks over some of the letters. So I changed the names, went back into Linux, unmounted the drive, made sure the permissions were set on the empty folder /mnt/win_e, and then re-mounted.

I think it's fixed now. It looks to me like this one folder was causing the whole problem and causing the permissions to change after mounting the drive. The folder in question was an html file my wife had saved with InternetExplorer along with the files folder that went along with it. She just saved the whole thing without first changing the name.

Evidently, Linux choked on an accented word that Windows could handle. Strange.

Does anybody know what "umask=000" means or what it does? I haven't been able to find anything on it.

The line in fstab now looks like this:

/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat auto,users,umask=000,rw 0 0