Hi everyone, my name's Chris and I'm using Linux for the first time right now! I run Linux off a 20 GB hard drive and I run Win98 off the other one.

So here's my first (in probably many) question about Linux.

I was under the assumption that Linux Red Hat 9 could read the files off my Win98 hard drive. Is this possible? If so, then how? I want to see if I can play my MP3s from my Win98 hard disk through Linux.

first

make a directory in the mnt directory

call it win98
type

mkdir /mnt/win98

next


type

mount -t vfat /dev/hdX /mnt/win98

replace X in hdx with appropriate drive letter (hda or hdb)

you'll also need the mp3 plugin for xmms as redhat leave it out for legal reasons
get it from http://www.xmms.org


congratulations on using linux and welcome

What you have to do is open a console then
su
#enter your root password
mkdir /mnt/win98
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/win98
exit

This will mount the Disk under /mnt/win98. THis is if your Win98 disk is hda1 if not change it approriatley.

Just point your mp3 player to that point.

If you want to add it semi permantaley you have to edit the /etc/fstab file. the easiest way on a console type
xhost +
su
#enter your root password
kedit

(if your using KDE or gedit for Gnome or other editor)
This will load the editor open the file /etc/fstab in the editor and add the line:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win98 vfat user,noauto 0 0

to the bottom of the file save and exit. You should end up back at the console type.

exit
xhost -

This puts everthing back to normal.

Now you can simply do
mount /mnt/win98

Or add an Icon to your desktop.

i don't know how much you know about mounting, but basically, you have to tell linux to create a link to whatever device (hard drive partition, cdrom drive, floppy etc) you're trying to access. you mount the device to a directory (ie /mnt/cdrom) and from then on all the files on the cdrom are accessible in that directory. that's basically what has to happen.

since you're using Red Hat, there should be a convenient newbie friendly gui for accomplishing all this, but if you do it yourself you'll be better off i think.

you need to decide first where you want to mount it, and create the appropriate directory - usually /mnt/windows or something like that. so go into /mnt and create a folder called windows.

now you want to edit a file ---> /etc/fstab in something like emacs or vim

you'll see a lot of entries, and you want to add one for your second hard drive. now i'm going to assume you're using ide drives, and that 98 is the slave on the primary cable...which means in linux it's referred to as hdb1 (if 98 is on your first drive it'll be hda1). the entry should look something like this:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0

the first field specifies the device, the second the mount point, the third the filesystem (vfat is windows FAT32, ext3 is usual linux), the fourth lists the options, and the fourth and fifth are dump and check - don't worry about them for right now.

once that's done, your 98 partition should be mounted automatically every time you boot, or type mount -a in a terminal. you can also just type mount /dev/hda1 (as long as hda1 is listed in fstab, otherwise type man mount to see the full use of the command).

that should be more than enough to get you started, and this is a great webpage for help on all sorts of things for more reading:

http://www.fokus.fhg.de/linux/LDP/rute/

so go give it a try, and have fun!

hehe. when i started my reply it was an empty thread, guess i was just too slow!

anyway, between all that i'm sure you can figure it out

i have a question about the edit of /etc/fstab, i read in the man that you should set the second 0 to 2 to make the drives be in parallel. from mcd's post:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0

would be:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults,umask=000 0 2

is this a good idea? im new also and dont want to mess up. and, leonscape says to put in "user" and "noauto" as options. i am having a hard time figuring out what is the best set of options. i read the man pages for all these options, but when i read around on this site i see a lot of different ways to do it.

what is the best options for setting mounts that only root can read and write to? and what is the best options for setting mounts that only regular user can read and write to?

thanks,

m

Hey guys, thanks for the information.

I got Red Hat to read my Windows 98 hard drive just fine.

Now if I can only get those drivers to work! :-)

as far as i understand, the check field (that last one) is used to determine what order the system checks the fs with fsck before it mounts it. i know that i had to download dosfsutils in order to install support for fsck.vfat, i don't believe it's installed as standard. that means that this field is largely irrelevant for vfat (or other unsupported) filesystems.

as for the other options, defaults sets rw,suid,dev,exec,auto,nouser,async and a short list of options follows here:


-async use asynchronous filesystem I/O

-auto mount when -a is used

-noauto Do NOT mount the filesystem even if -a is used

-nouser Only root can mount the filesystem

-user Allow users to mount the filesystem

-noexec Don't allow execution of files from this filesystem

-nosuid Don't allow programs in this filesystem to run as setuid or setgid

-suid Allow programs to run as setuid or setgid

-sync Use synchronous filesystem I/O

-timeout=# length of time before an access times out used with soft

-umask set permissions

for more information use man mount, or search around online
basically, it will work with many different combinations, so use the one you feel most comfortable with and that works best for your needs.