I have just installed linux (mandrake 9.1) as my sencond operating system and i cannot find my media from my on my windows partitions (in ntfs format) now i have 4000 odd mp3's i want to play whilst in linux, can anyone help me here?

my windows address for them would be I:\Media\Cd's

what would i put in linux and where would i put it?

cheers

Jam

btw, where is the best community site/the best download site/?

if you go to /mnt/ folder in mandrake you will see all different options ex windows,floppy etc. It should be in there somewhere.

ty jatt, i'll try it now

Warning: I am a NOOB but....

I believe you may have to mount that partition first before using it. You can look in /dev for the partition. Someone else may have a better way of figuring out what the partition is called too. To mount a windows partition to linux goes something like this:

1. Make the directory to mount the partition to
mkdir /mnt/windows

2. Mount the partition
mount -t ntfs /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows

This example assumes the partition is called "hdb1".
It also assumes you made that "windows" directory from step one.

The -t option tells Linux what the file system is. Its probably mandantory to name this with NTFS because I think the default is EXT (Linux file system).

Once you get the mount point created and the file system mounted, you will want to automate the mounting each time the OS starts. THis is done by putting an entry in /etc/fstab
which is the Linux File System TABle.

If /fstab is not in /etc, you ca try to locate it by :

whereis fstab (fast but not thourough)

OR

find / -name fstab (slow but searches everywhere IF you are root)

Assuming the example above is accurate, you want to put an entry on fstab like so (fstab is just a text file so pico, vi, nano, etc is fine):

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows ntfs auto,users 0 0

I appologize if I was nooby. I am new so all this is not obvious to me like it is too some.

Yeah, but mandrake already has /mnt/windows. It does that automatically

just mount it and cd into it

also for you RH9 users, here is what i used to get my Windows HD to mount.

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/in...hat.html#wrong

well i used the mount and it found all my windows partitions (calling them win_c1, win_c2, win_d1, win_d2 and win_e, even though letter wise in windows they're C, D, E, I and J!!) so now i've found my music, i try to play it but it doesn't like it, it's very bitty and not playing the files cleanly, any idea why?

cheers for your help so far, jam

I think its because you are reading the files from NTFS system.

Hey JamDunc:

I am glad that mount expalnation helped. As far as it not playing well, I have not had any problem reading from NTFS or VFAT partitions. I even read from them across a network and from duel boot harddrives but still no problem. Please try to copy a particular file (pick one) from the NTFS partition to your Linux partition and play it from the Linux side. This should rule out problems reading from the NTFS partition. Music is usually stored as a bit stream and I think both windows and Linux store these files in a similar fashion as long as they are both 32 bit machines. Good luck and just try one solution at a time. If the song plays crappy even from the Linux side, then the player is suspect perhaps. Post your results because others may have ideas from that.

Late,

JD

In the /etc/fstab file, put ro because NTFS is still experimental.

For example, if your line or any lines with NTFS that says this
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows ntfs auto,users 0 0

change it to
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows ntfs ro,auto,users 0 0

This makes your NTFS partitions be safely read.

You have to be log in as su or root to change the fstab file.

Next type mount -a to refresh the fstab file. Log out of su or root.


For the sound problem, disable artsd. Next download ALSA and read the instructions for your sound device. After you compiled ALSA and configuring your sound device. Go into Mandrake Control Center and make sure sound and ALSA services is turned on. Reboot the computer. You should see the new version of ALSA being used during the start up sequence.