Mounting external Firewire NTFS HDD & Permissions

Ganza · 11-01-2005, 04:06 PM

Hi, I'm a total newbie as far as Linux is concerned, I love it thus far but I'm having a little problem.

When I first installed my linux distribution (SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal) I set as an option for the installer/partitioner to mount my Windows drives onto the /windows/ directory.

For C (the main Windows partition) and D (a stupid partition my laptop had on it) it worked, but for H (my external hard drive where all my files are) it didn't.

I don't remember how, but after hours of searching, I managed to mount the disk on /windows/h.

After that, though, when trying to access it as a normal user I couldn't.

So I logged in as root, tried to change the permissions, but it wouldn't let me!!!

Today, I did a chmod -R a+rwx /windows/h as root, and it did let me access it.

But it looks like an empty folder now!!! When I was logged in as root before I managed to change the permissions I could actually see the files but now I can't.

Can anyone help me with this? How can I mount my external firewire HDD to someplace where I can access it (like /home/myhdd or something)...and how do I change the user/group/permissions?

Any help would be greatly appreciated since I'm loving this system and I would really like to get my hdd working so that I can use it more.

Thanks in advance,

Ganza

ps: When I try to mount the device someplace else, I get this error message

so-13434-x0:/home/ganza # mkdir /home/dekai
so-13434-x0:/home/ganza # mount -t ntfs /dev/sdc /home/dekai
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc,
or too many mounted file systems

Please help?

imitheos · 11-01-2005, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ganza
Hi, I'm a total newbie as far as Linux is concerned, I love it thus far but I'm having a little problem.

When I first installed my linux distribution (SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal) I set as an option for the installer/partitioner to mount my Windows drives onto the /windows/ directory.

For C (the main Windows partition) and D (a stupid partition my laptop had on it) it worked, but for H (my external hard drive where all my files are) it didn't.

I don't remember how, but after hours of searching, I managed to mount the disk on /windows/h.

After that, though, when trying to access it as a normal user I couldn't.

So I logged in as root, tried to change the permissions, but it wouldn't let me!!!

Today, I did a chmod -R a+rwx /windows/h as root, and it did let me access it.

But it looks like an empty folder now!!! When I was logged in as root before I managed to change the permissions I could actually see the files but now I can't.

Can anyone help me with this? How can I mount my external firewire HDD to someplace where I can access it (like /home/myhdd or something)...and how do I change the user/group/permissions?

Any help would be greatly appreciated since I'm loving this system and I would really like to get my hdd working so that I can use it more.

Thanks in advance,

Ganza

ps: When I try to mount the device someplace else, I get this error message

so-13434-x0:/home/ganza # mkdir /home/dekai
so-13434-x0:/home/ganza # mount -t ntfs /dev/sdc /home/dekai
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdc,
or too many mounted file systems

Please help?

/dev/sdc is the whole disk, that is why it doesn't let you mount it.
You need to choose a partition from that disk.

I assume that your external disk is /dev/sdc
Usually it will contain only one partition so a safe guess is /dev/sdc1
If you want to see how many partition there are run

Code:

fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Now if you want to mount the partition you run

Code:

mount /dev/sdc1 /home/dekai -o umask=000

umask=000 gives "rwxrwxrwx" so anybody has full access. Generally you don't want that if there are other users in your box.
If you want an other set of partitions change the umask value

If you want this partition to get automatically mounted every time you boot the OS then you need to put it in /etc/fstab
See what your entries for "C:" and "D:" are and copy/change them for "H:" just remember the "umask" option.

Ganza · 11-01-2005, 04:52 PM

Ok, thanks I'm gonna try that thing for the mounting.

How can I do that other thing you told me to though? I don't want to mess anything up, could you give me some step to step instructions?

Also, how can I make sure my HDD is still recognized by the system?

Eyxaristw kai pali! (ki egw apo Ellada eimai)

Ganza · 11-01-2005, 08:08 PM

I tried your method, and it worked momentarilly, but I'm still having problem with access...you see even when logged in to the KDE as root it doesn't let me change the permissions for a reason.

Help anyone?

I need a total n00b step to step guide, but PLEASE PLEASE help because I have all my files in that HDD.

Ganza · 11-02-2005, 07:04 AM

*bump* Help anyone? I know some of the experts must know how to fix this.

BNI · 11-02-2005, 07:52 AM

You say you're having trouble with access, could you be a little more specific?

If the problem is you can access the drive but not change permissions, that would be because permissions are part of the linux filesystems, they don't exist at all on vfat and ntfs drives. Because of that, the whole partition has to be mounted with one global set of permissions (ie root:root rwxrwxrwx). Chmod and chown won't work on anything on the partition or the mount point itself, the only way to change is to remount with a different set of permissions.

imitheos · 11-02-2005, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ganza
I tried your method, and it worked momentarilly, but I'm still having problem with access...you see even when logged in to the KDE as root it doesn't let me change the permissions for a reason.

Help anyone?

I need a total n00b step to step guide, but PLEASE PLEASE help because I have all my files in that HDD.

What do you mean momentarilly ?
You can't change the permissions in a ntfs filesystem (you don't even have full write support)
That is why you choose the umask option when mounting.

Ganza · 11-05-2005, 06:10 PM

Ok, seems like everybody assumes I know anything about Linux, which I don't

I'll give more details again, in case anyone can give me a complete n00b guide for this:

Distribution: SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal Edition
Hard Drive: External, Firewire Connection
Hard Drive's File System: NTFS

Need guide on:

Mounting the hdd at a specific point, and being able to access it and do anything to it as the normal user.
That guide could include how to set groups and all that since I don't have any experience with it.

Thanks in advance,

Ganza

cs-cam · 11-05-2005, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Mounting the hdd at a specific point, and being able to access it and do anything to it as the normal user.
That guide could include how to set groups and all that since I don't have any experience with it.

Okay, you aren't understanding us

You cannot write to a NTFS partition in linux. You cannot change groups for files on a NTFS partition in linux. All you can do is read the files, nothing else.

Now with that out of the road, people have already suggested correct ways to do this, so I'll put them in together and tell you exactly what to type in your terminal, the rest is up to luck

You need to do this as root, any lines starting with a '#' are comments to help you on the way.

Code:

umount /windows/h
# that might have given you an error, don't worry about it
cat /etc/mtab | grep sdc
# if anything at all was printed after you run that last line STOP HERE!
rm -r /windows/h
mkdir /windows/h
chmod a+r /windows/h
mount -t ntfs -o umask=000,users,ro /dev/sdc1 /windows/h

There is no reason that shouldn't work provided your kernel is built with NTFS support, let us know how it goes

Ganza · 11-06-2005, 07:39 AM

Wow...I leave my topic for a day and it gets pushed back to the 25th page+!!!

Anyway, I was thinking, if I convert my HDD to FAT32, will I be able to access and write to/execute from it in Linux?

While converting in Windows, is there any danger of data loss, and after having converted, will I have to follow a different procedure in Linux?

Thanks again,

Ganza