I searched and found a method to automount ntfs harddrives at boot time.
I modified the /etc/fstab file and wrote the required lines which i found from the blkid command.

the problem is now due to fstab which i probably did not edited properly, there is a message at boot up that one or more of the parititions cannot be mount. so theres only one option and that is to enter the recovery shell then by pressing the esc key.
i did that too and found out that the required directories which work as mount point are also not created.
i had taken a back up of the original fstab before the modification.
even though being a root user at command line i am not able to replace the modified fstab in the /etc/fstab with the original backup i kept.
the reason is : it says that i cannot write to the file system as it is a read-only system.
m not even able to edit the fstab using nano.says again that it is a read only filesystem.

hope to get an early positive reply.
thank you.

posting the edit you made to fstab would help

the most common problem is using a 5+ year old " how to" and putting "ntfs" in as the format instead of the correct "ntfs-3g"
YOU need to make the /mnt/someNamedFolder (like /mnt/WinC_drive) FIRST the os WILL NOT make it for you if you use fstab and NOT the system default Udev
the default would be to have udev auto mount it to /media/somelongHexNumber

instead of this "recovery shell"
boot into "single user mode" ( add a 1 to the end of the boot line ) and / or "google/linux" it .
http://www.google.com/linux

that will auto make you root and have FULL root permissions

1 members found this post helpful.

hi,


Have u tried below command in single user mod
#mount -O remount,rw /

after that u can edit /etc/fstab file it won't show the readonly file system

1 members found this post helpful.

What OS?
Wich bootloader?
Can you get into single-user mode or only grub prompt.
http://linuxtipstricks.wordpress.com...ws-changed-it/
http://linuxtipstricks.wordpress.com...ws-changed-it/
If debian Once you get in try
update-grub
it should correct fstab.
If that doesn't work you can restore backup fstab.

Example: This not the file that you are working on
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf-backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf

hey John.. it really difficult for me to give the same edited fstab as i cant even copy it now.
but i can give u some idea of what i did.

i created a python script which actually parsed some files and created a sequence of lines that are to be append to the fstab.
one such line is as shown below.

UUID = "xlaldkadjf (whatever)"
/dev/sda1 /media/XP ntfs-3g defaults locale=un_es utf8 0 0

this is the line one of those lines that i my python script added to fstab. but still its not perfect as i don't rememeber the exact parameters passed on.

also what i think is maybe the ext4 partition on which my ubuntu 9.10 is mounted is mounted partially and not completely.
also the line that i showed u above is appended at the end of the file and the previous content of the file is as it is.
the previous content of the file does the following thing : it mounts the ext4 and cdrom0 ..well m sorry if the information i provided is not enough.
but thanks as u showd up ur interest.
see if u can help me with this.
have to work on my project and present it in around 10 days.. so need my system up and running.for that.

Yes gayatri, i tried the above command but the system says that the drive /dev/sda6 (which is my ubuntu ext4 partition) is already mounted.
still it does not work and m not able to edit my /etc/fstab file.

hey eddy, my OS is Ubuntu 9.10.
bootloader is grub 2.
i can get the grub screen.
its only after that the ubuntu symbol shows up and in very small letters is written beneath it about my drive faults.
it says one or more of the drives cannot be mounted.
and it also says that waiting for the /dev/sda6 blah blah blah
waiting for /dev/sda5;;;;;
and similar such statements for all of my drives (7 partitions in 2 harddrives + one swap)

sir, i also tried the update-grub as u told it will repair fstab
but when i fired this command in the recovery shell the following output occured.

searchin for GRUB installation directory..... found /boot/grub.
open : Read-only file system
(and my prompt back)
root@mypc:

I would use the cd mount the drive & try to
update-grub
& reboot.
If that doesn't work copy /etc/fstab.

cp /etc/fstab.back /etc/fstab
I'm not sure that's the exact command because you have to find out what you named backup file as.
When you first get in issue command ls to see if it was created in /
If not
cd /etc
ls

With this showing you don't need cd.
cd /etc
ls
The others here can give some better search commands.

hey guys.. thanks a lot for u showed up ur interest.

Johns google/linux advice worked for me.
remounted my partition of ext4 that contained the ubuntu os.

"mount -rw -o remount /"

with the above command
and then edited the fstab file.
"nano /etc/fstab"
i removed the lines that were appended and got my gnome gui.
again tried to save the file.
and behold guys.. it worked..

thanks to all.
thanks to linuxquestions.org