Hi all,
Help - thus far you have solved all my issues.

I have two lap tops one running mint one running win 7 for safety until I am sure I can do what I want with mint
I had one large external hard drive (NTFS) on which I mirror things I don’t want to lose every 3-4 mths but mostly I use USB stick (fat32)

Last night I partitioned it into two drives primary one fat 32 and the second one ext4 - guess what Linux read the primary partition and refused to play ball with the second partition. I could not download anything to it root issue.(There will be a notice going out soon that ‘Terminal is dead’ it totally refused my approaches)

Question should I format it to suit Linux and windows (?NTFS Ext4 or fat 32) and use folders but windows on oracle must be able to read it, or how do I get root to recognize the Linux partition

What would be best Hope this makes sense it seems a bit long winded
Tirnanog

After you formatted it did you make a file system for it? Note that you would partition with something like fdisk, but you next need to make a file system using something like mkfs. Perhaps you can relate the commands or processes you used to format the ext4 partition.

I don't know what Terminal is dead means. I have never heard of that before.

If you are having trouble using the ext4 partition on the external drive it is probably just ownership.
In a terminal, enter the command to indentify the mount point of your partition on the external drive.
It will look something like this:
/dev/sdb2 on /media/yourusername/partitionlabel type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2)
Change ownership with this command:
That applies to linux formatted partitions (ext4), not ntfs.
Since Windows is not smart enough to use linux partitions, you do have to have a fat or ntfs partition for your Windows backups.

I'd agree you need to post more information on what you did because it doesn't make sense. I have an external drive with 8 partitions, 2 primary ntfs and 6 logical with a Linux filesystem. I can access and use all from Linux but obviously, only the 2 ntfs from windows so something went wrong for you and you'll need to post more details, especially what "play ball" means.

sorry if i was unclear rather elderly female and dim
I used gparted made windows primary partition and linux the logical partition - sorry you misunderstood my English humor I wont do it again !!

If I am reading your initial post correctly, you seem to be saying you cannot copy anything to the partition on the external disk. If that's the case, it is most likely a problem with the ownership of the mount point or permissions as suggested above and you would need to change that. You can get that information by opening a terminal and running the ls -l command on the mount point. Can't be any more detailed without more details from you.

hiYancek

yes that is all I want to do - wine is working - virtual drive is working I have saved all my windows stuff on partition 1 I just want to save all my Linux documents on Partition 2 I am using clonzilla for safety so I have images. I don't think I need a file system ---- afraid of the terminal (that why I wanted to shoot it) As you say hard drive shows up in root I did not have this issue before when it was all ntfs it just opened and I dropped my file in there.
Tirnanog

Yes you do and I'm sure there is one. You can find the type of filesystem on any mounted partition by typing the following in a terminal:

df -T

For all partitions: sudo parted -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command)

Under Mint, additional partitions on an external hard drive will be available under the /media/username directory (replacing username with your actual user name). If you run the following command it will tell you the owner:group as well as the permissions for the owner:groupthers:

ls -l /media
ls -l /media/username

You can change the owner using the chown command as root (using sudo).

sudo chown -R username /media/username/partition2

Using the above, substitute your actual username and the directory mount point of the partition for partition2. Probably a UUID, a long series of numbers/letters unless you created a mount point for it.

windows mounted but not linux these are the results of what you asked


Filesystem Type 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on/
/dev/sda2 ext4 206603936 79056192 117029780 41% /
none tmpfs 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev devtmpfs 1837372 12 1837360 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 370588 1360 369228 1% /run
none tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none tmpfs 1852932 76 1852856 1% /run/shm
none tmpfs 102400 48 102352 1% /run/user
/dev/sda3 vfat 97631936 68938208 28693728 71% /media/joan/2E5C-D8B3
/dev/sdb1 vfat 513652224 135635008 378017216 27% /media/joan/Windows


ls -l /media
total 4
drwxr-x---+ 4 root root 4096 Oct 6 16:36 joan

ls -l /media/username
ls: cannot access /media/username: No such file or directory


sudo chown -R username /media/username/partition2

chown: cannot access ‘/media/xxxx/partition2/linux/’: No such file or directory
chown: cannot access ‘HDS721010CLA332:’: No such file or directory
chown: cannot access ‘Linux’: No such file or directory

I don't really understand what what is wrong start from scratch I think is called for

Tirnanog


When you do ls (list) for /media it will not show your linux partition, because it is not mounted - as you noted already.
The only way it will show up, and the only way you can run the chown command on it, is if it is mounted.

You don't have to start from scratch. It is just a matter of learning what to do.

Please run these 2 commands and post the result here.

I don't see an external hard drive here at all. I interpret /dev/sda as internal, you have Windows likely on sda1 and then Linux as your second boot on sda2. Seems that sda3 is partitioned as a Windows drive partition.

What he meant for you to do was replace "username" with your username, as he didn't know yours. So, now,

So if
Gives you
You would run

This won't help you now, as your output doesn't show the partition mounted, but this should help you in the future when someone tells you to enter a command with "username" in it.

Now, to try and mount that filesystem, plug in the drive. If it's not autodetected, run garted. Right click the partition, and select the menu item to "Mount" the partition. However, something's funny here as Mint should be automounting it if everything was done right. If still no luck, paste the output of the command TXLonghorn asked for here.

Many Thanks to you all - I have only been using Linux for 2 weeks and it is fully functioning to do teaching materials etc. edit books Internet and mail so this is not important

Can anyone point me to a crib sheet which I can follow otherwise I will return to NTFS for now - I need to learn these commands it is getting very confusing

Regards Tirnanog

The first link is the most detailed, the other links are more basic with just a few commands for starters.

http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/..._ugbasics.html

http://www.tecmint.com/useful-linux-...s-for-newbies/

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/conten...-commands.html