I just installed Mandrake on my PC, dual-booting with XP. I noticed that Windows can not see the Linux partitions. Is there any way that I could have installed Linux so that the partitions and file systems are visible to Windows?

I let the Mandrake installer partition the free unpartitioned space on my hard drive. Could I have (1) partitioned and formated the space first with Windows and then installed Linux onto that space (2) let mandrake partition the free space using a different file system that XP recognizes (I though I chose FAT32, but maybe I screwed that up). Would either of these approaches work?

Thanks.

It would probably not be a good idea use a filesystem that Windows recognizes for Linux. They don't support stuff like linux permissions and ownership, and that'll cause problems. The only one that will work properly is the umsdos filesystem, but it has limitations. You can use a program like explore2fs to browse ext2 and ext3 partitions from windows.

The reason that you cannot see the Mandrake side of the hard drive from Windows is that it uses ext2 or ext3. Windows does not understand this filesystem an cannot read it.

As for changing the filesystem of Madrake I would not recommend it. As aaa points out this could causemore problems that it is worth. If you are just trying to come up with a way to share information between the two operating systems I would suggest another partion that is formatted as FAT, not NFTS!

Mounting an NTFS partition is posible but not recommended. Linux can mess up an NTFS filesystem pretty good.

Sorry for the bad news but everyone/thing has its limitations...

Thanks for the explanation. I already have plenty of hd storage that is actively visible to both os's, so that's no prob anyway. My primary interested is just educational. I though it would be cool to see what my linux partitions looks like through the eyes of xp. No good reason.

When I installed Mandrake I was asked which fs I'd like to use and I chose FAT32. So what was that about if ext2 or ext3 was used anyway? Am I remembering wrong?

in a command line window (terminal) type the command 'df -T'. It should give you output like this...

/dev/hda3 ext3 7653228 2155348 5109108 30% /
/dev/hda1 ext3 77750 34238 39498 47% /boot
none tmpfs 62956 0 62956 0% /dev/shm
/dev/md0 ext3 116817300 61065884 49817388 56% /var

As you can see the filesystem type is now displayed for all of your partitions. what does yours display?

Mounting NTFS filesystems is fine as long as you do it in Read-only mode - its writing to NTFS that can cause problems.

Mandrake needs to be installed on a Linux filesystem - ext3 is a good choice, not FAT32.

Skyline,

You can mount NTFS in read/write mode if you want. Most distros will only mount them as read-only by default. This is a way of protecting users from themselves.

Mandrake can be installed on a FAT system and does not need to be on an ext filesystem. Again, most distros will only allow you to do it on ext filesystems to protect their uses from headaches.

Hence my information is valid...

It certainly wouldn't look very cool. Almost everything would be marked as unknown.

There is an application called explore2fs that will let windows view linux partitions if they are ext2 or ext3.

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

Dillybat

This is silly advice to give - people mount NTFS filesystems all the time on this site with no probs - the key is, as I said, to only only read from NTFS and not try to write to it - if you're using the first NTFS driver there's a possibility of corrupting the filesystem....

Skyline,

You suggest we censor the truth...

I say give people the information and let them decide for themselves.

If people wanted someone to censor information they would not be using Linux...

From the ntfs-linux project (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/):

All,

all this information about if and should you mount an NTFS file system is true... But, I think we are all losing ourselves in the debate. We have spun off into a discussion that is not in the spirit of the original question...

So what is a Dillybat?

Dillybat -

After running df -T i got:

/dev/hda5 ext3 5.8G 1.7G 3.9G 30% /
/dev/hda7 ext3 13G 40M 13G 1% /home
/dev/hda1 vfat 19G 5.7G 13G 31% /mnt/win_c
/dev/hdb1 vfat 38G 24G 14G 64% /mnt/win_c2
/dev/hdb2 vfat 38G 16G 23G 41% /mnt/win_d

I understand the read/write headache with installing on NTFS ... but what about FAT? My guess (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Linux can read and write to a FAT partition but doesn't respond well to being installed on one.

Also, does the Mandrake installer create and mount a second partition on /home by default? Is there some advantage to this over one-big-good-one mounted at the root?

You're right about the spirit of my question, by the way. At this point I'm just curious - there's no way I'm gonna try a read-only NTFS partition.

Thanks.