Hard drive mounting problems in Suse 8.2

njdevilsd · 08-12-2003, 01:23 AM

Hey all,

This problem is mostly my fault for not researching before I installed Suse 8.2, but it's entirely fixable, I just don't know how.

So, what has happend is that I partitioned my hard drive into 3 sections, 1 for linux, 1 for windows, and a large one for all kinda of data. My problem is that I used NTFS for the large data partition.

When I installed Linux, it recognized and mounted the data partition and all seemed to be good, except that I couldn't write to this drive. After trying to change permissions in root used mode and doing a little bit of searching, I found that my problem was that the drive should be using FAT32 for Linux to write to it. So I went back into Partition Magic and changed it over.

After re-mounting the drive in Suse, I found that I was still unable to write to it. After seeing this, I became completely lost and turned to the forum.

If some has seen the same problem and could help me out, that would be excellent. It's hard working with Linux when you have nowhere to put anything new.

thank you!

njdevilsd

man_made_man · 08-29-2003, 03:25 AM

man id like to inform you that i have the same problem..... and did the same thing you did. i want to save files or transfer files in linux from win2k.... i also have post regarding this they told me that NTFS parttion is read only! im planning to convert my ntfs patition to fat32 just like what you did.... but you told tha you already did that..... well ill give it a try and see for myself. i hope there is a ways that we could write in ntfs filesystem in windows mode. good luck to both of us....

DMR · 08-29-2003, 05:37 AM

Writing to NTFS is at the "experimental" stage in Linux, which is why you get read-only by default. Full NTFS support is still a work-in-progress; check the NTFS-related updates at www.sourceforge.net for ongoing info.

As far as mounting FAT/FAT32 partitions and the issues of permissions, go, here's some info I posted for someone else dealing with the same issues:

Quote:

.... (obviously, substitute your /dev/hdxy and /mnt/whatever_directory values for the ones in my example):

The default permissions for a mounted FAT32 volume are rwx for root, but only rx for normal users.

In Linux, permission control works differently for FAT32 and NTFS filesystems than it does for native Linux filesystems (ext2, ext3, reiser, etc.). Try this:

1. The UNIX permissions of a directory onto which you mount a Windows filesystem can't be changed while the fileystem is mounted. Unmount the Windows partition; you should then be able to chmod the permissions of /mnt/Windows.

2. Windows doesn't support UNIX-style permissions, and you can only apply permissions to the entire filesystem, not to individual Windows files/folders. This is done with the "umask" option of the mount command. In /etc/fstab, change the mount entry for your Windows partition to this:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/Windows vfat users,defaults,umask=000 0 0

(the "users" option allows anyone to mount/unmount the drive and overrides the default , which is that only root is allowed to mount/unmount.)

The value of the permission bits used with umask are the opposite of those used with the chmod command. For example, the following pairs are equivalent:

umask=000 and chmod 777
umask=022 and chmod 755

man_made_man · 08-29-2003, 06:12 AM

so there is a possibility.... maybe someday... i hope that they could make it...
as of now maybe i should i have a fat32 patition to interchange files between my suse 8.2 and win2k.

thanks for the info sir...... 3rd day member and im learning priceless things.