Hello!

Greeting to ya all. Since I have decided to quit using Windows at home, except for playing that is... I am going to need some help from you guys out there.

This might seem weird but I don't have a clue about Linux, and I have just installed Debian.

My first question is this: HOW do I get to see the windows partitions? I have about 4 harddrives on the computer, and 10-15 partitions or something. But I can't find them when I use Debian.

My other question is: How do I install GAIM? Please bare in mind that I'm a complete noob, who has just set out on a journey to use Linux.

And I guess that I will post about a million questions in this forum in time :-D

You are in luck with Debian. Installing programs is a breeze. Open a console, become root (use the 'su' command) and type 'apt-get install gaim'.

Welcome to LQ

In order for linux to see other partitions you have to declare them in your /etc/fstab file. For example here is the line that corrisponds to my windows XP partition
/dev/hda1 is the device you want to be able to mount (first harddisk first partition ide harddrive in this case)

/mnt/windows is the mount point (the directory that you want the filesystem attached to)

ntfs is the filesystem (use vfat if its a fat32 filesystem)

auto makes it automaticly mount (after the first mount)

user makes it so non-root users can mount/unmount

ro makes it read-only (you cant write to ntfs without risking corruption...remove this option if its vfat)

0 0 - I dont know what this is for but it is needed


Once you have that set up just do replacing /mnt/windows with whatever your mount point was. If you can't seem to mount ntfs then your kernel probably isn't compiled with support for it. Here is a good guide to compiling your own kernel is you need to add NTFS support.

Allrighty then! Thanks folk. Gaim is on, no with the mounting. Wish me luck...

Err...


I have installed Debian on one of my many partitions. I haven't mounted any Windows-partitions. How do I get access to them via Debian?

How do I list them up? When I write /dev/hda1 and go to, I get an error message that Nautilus don't have any programs capable of showing the file

First, you need to know 2 things:
What is the partition type?
If your Windows is NT, 2000, or XP, it's of type 'ntfs'.
If your Windows is 3.1, 95, or 98 it's PROBABLY of type 'vfat'.
Where is the partition?
Linux uses the following device naming scheme for harddrives:
hdxy where x=a, b, c, d (First IDE Master, First IDE Slave, Second IDE Master, Second IDE Slave) and y=1, 2, 3,..., 12 (First Partition, Second Partition, etc) If you installed Windows first, it is PROBABLY on hda1, but you may have to make sure.

If you have an NTFS Partition, which it probably is, based on your error message, you'll need to check out the Linux NTFS Project to get the driver that you need to build into your kernel to support NTFS partitions. WARNING: READ THE DOCUMENTATION, If you don't do what the nice NTFS people tell you to do, you risk losing ALL the data on your NTFS partition (bad). I recommend backing up your data before you try this.

Let us know if you need more guidance, we're happy to help. Best of Luck!

fdisk -l will list any that Linux sees.

To access a filesystem on a device partition in /dev that has not been mounted by the system, you'll need to mount it. The normal way to do this is to create an empty directory in /mnt and then mount the partition on it. Linux will do this during boot if you populate /etc/fstab with the necessary information.

/dev/hda = primary master
/dev/hdb = primary slave
/dev/hdc = secondary master
/dev/hdd = secondary slave

Partitions on a device are identified by number: /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 etc.

If you have a PCI IDE controller, a drive attached to it may show up as /dev/hde. You'll find SCSI devices at /dev/sd*

I suggest you create suitable directories in /mnt. eg:
mkdir /mnt/windows_XP_c
mkdir /mnt/windows_XP_d

Then identify and mount the partitions that you want to access. eg:
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows_XP_c
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows_XP_d

If mount is unable to auto-identify the filesystem, you may need to specify it. eg:
mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows_XP_c

You can specify extra mount options like iocharset, codepage, utf8 which you may need for some filesystems. You can also specify read-only or read-write and a umask to control access by non-root users.

When you're happy with the setup, you can populate /etc/fstab for automounting on boot.

FYI: The fifth field (the first number) in fstab is whether the filesystem should be backed up or not. The sixth is the filesystem check option (used by fschk). Normally both are zero, as above.

More info on fstab: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

Allrighty then! That's what I'll do (tomorrow). Right now it's nappy time :-)

How do I declare them?

Quote:

/mnt/windows is the mount point (the directory that you want the filesystem attached to)

How do I "attach"?

ntfs is the filesystem (use vfat if its a fat32 filesystem)

auto makes it automaticly mount (after the first mount)

user makes it so non-root users can mount/unmount

ro makes it read-only (you cant write to ntfs without risking corruption...remove this option if its vfat)

0 0 - I dont know what this is for but it is needed


Once you have that set up just do

Code:

mount /mnt/windows

replacing /mnt/windows with whatever your mount point was. If you can't seem to mount ntfs then your kernel probably isn't compiled with support for it. Here is a good guide to compiling your own kernel is you need to add NTFS support. [/QUOTE]