i am using red hat 9 with gnome interface

command line from the terminal

more /etc/fstab

this is what i get
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

how come i dont see my other drives i have 2 scsii drives and 3 ide. where r they??

Using a disk partitioning utility will tell you the drives available. This has to be matched against the entries in /etcfstab.

Not sure how to automate the process.

HTH

End

As far as i remember, those drives you are talking about are not added to fstab directly. You need to either mount them manually or edit /etc/fstab file to mount them automatically at boot. First, you need to make directories for each drive (partition) you want to mount and then edit fstab.

Here's what I have.

/dev/hda /mnt/winxp ntfs noauto,ro,users,umask=000 0 0

to mount my ntfs drive. noauto option doesnt mount drive at boot. user option lets users mount partition. After I add this to fstab, right click on gnome-desktop and I'll see disks>winxp.

For ntfs you need to patch your kernel to read NTFS partition. Look here for more info on
NTFS in linux

there's only read-only support for NTFS in linux.

for fat32...support is inbuilt so you need not worry.

Hope this helps

You can also see what devices were detected by looking at the file called dmesg (usually in the /var/log directory). Type
dmesg|less
at a console, or
dmesg|grep hd
and see all lines containing the string 'hd'. Here is a part of mine:
hda: WDC WD400BB-00AUA1, ATA DISK drive
hdb: ST340016A, ATA DISK drive
hdc: _NEC DVD_RW ND-2500A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide2: BM-DMA at 0xac00-0xac07, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0xac08-0xac0f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
hde: Maxtor 6Y080L0, ATA DISK drive
hdg: SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616T, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdh: PHILIPS CDRW2412A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 78165360 sectors (40020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdb: max request size: 128KiB
hdb: 78165360 sectors (40020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hde: max request size: 128KiB
hde: 160086528 sectors (81964 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(133)
Reiserfs journal params: device hda7, size 8192, journal first block 18 ...
Or try
dmesg|grep ide
As you can see from above my 80G hard drive is named hde, and I have the following lines in my /etc/fstab file:
/dev/hde5 /mnt/hde5 ext3 defaults,users 1 1
/dev/hde7 /mnt/hde7 ext3 defaults,users 1 1
where I created the directories /mnt/hde5 /mnt/hde7 beforehand.
This is just one way; as the other posters said, you may also use some utility to find out how your drives are mapped.

/sbin/fdisk -l

This will show all partitions on all drives.

I didn't know that; that is a much neater, trickykid.

ok i am about to give up!!!! well i will try abit more.

ok now i know that i have
1. a drive called hdc1 and hdc2 that are fat32 i see this in the hardware browser 'i use them in windows to store documents'
2. created a directory named windows and a directory named drive1 in the /mnt directory.
3. opened from system tools a terminal and loged on as root with the su command.
4. then i typed the command mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1/mnt/windows
5. the i go to the windows directory i created int the /mnt and i see no files.

please help help help

do you mean you created something like this
/mnt/windows/drive1 to mount your hdc1. If that is the case your syntax is bad.

here's the right syntax

mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows/drive1

you didnt provide space between /dev/hdc1 and /mnt/windows. Try this...

haleluya thanks works good thanks again

very good now how do i do that i don't allways have to type the mount command. is there a startup file like in windows ???

refer to my 2nd post in this thread for options

try this in (as su)
add the following line at the end
(you can either put space or a tab)

then logout and login again as user...then you can right click on gnome there you'll see disks>drive1

you'll be able to browse the contents of your fat32 partition.