Hello

I've a system running with slack 8

I've recently bought a 80 GB harddrive, i want to work on it from a windows machine to add files and other things

So I have to use fat32 or ntfs filesystem so windows can handle it
but after putting files on it from windows,
I want to plugg the disk in my linux fileserver but i can't just reformat it to a filesystem for linux beceause the data on the disk has to stay there


So i need to know if slack 8 can handle it.

I've already read some threads and some say about adding the function into the kernel but i'm not that good with linux to go f u c k around in the kernel.


Can anybody please advise me concerning this situation ?


Thx in advance

First of all, watch your language please. This is a public forum.

Second of all, if you haven't touched your default kernel, it should come come with FAT32 support which you will need to use the vfat option when mounting the drive. It does however come with NTFS 'read-only' support but sometimes not by default, you either have to load the ntfs module and if that doesn't work, recompile the kernel to support NTFS.
My suggestion would be to stick with FAT, you can read and write to it from Linux with no problems.

What happens when you try to mount the drive? Remember, filesystem to mount it as is vfat.

> i want to work on it from a windows machine

youu mean locally with dual boot? If you export it via samba, you don't have to worry about the physical fs being windows-readable.

No just gonna move the disk from one computer to another, and i don't have samba up and running, haven't got the time for it yet.

But thx for the reply anyway.



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Trickykid your reply was what i needed thx !!!

I'm planning to stay with FAT32, haven't tried to mount it yet, gotta wait a week to get home...

But can you gimme some more details about the part 'mounting with vfat' ?

if you can mount a linux fs, you're able to mount a vfat too. As root, type
# mkdir /mnt/data (or whatever name you choose)
# mount -t vfat /dev/hdc1 /mnt/data
change hdc1 to the actual partition (hdc1 is on secondary master, hdb1 on primary slave, etc.)
to have it mounted at boot time add a line similar to this to your /etc/fstab:
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/data1 vfat rw,umask=0 0 0
if you want it readonly, use ro instead of rw

See also this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5&pagenumber=1


Note that vfat is slower than most (all?) native linux filesystems, so it's not a ggod choice for a file server. It has no permissions too. If you have <40gb data, you should imo only use 40gb for your fat partition, fill it on your win box, then on linux create a 40gb ext2 or reisefs partition, copy files to it, and keep the vfat for backups.

ok thx i'll keep that in mind !

what do you mean by It has no permissions too.

permissions like rwx ? those you change with chmod 755 ...