Changing permissions on my windows partition
 

Currently the permissions on my windows partition are as follows:

When I try to change the permissions on the windows/ directory, as root, I get the following:

Basically what I would like to do is have a symbolic link in my personal linux home directory to my mp3 folder that resides in windows; so that I can play mp3's in linux as a regular user rather than having to run XMMS as root.

What permissions do I have to change on my windows/ folder? And how do I change them as root so that I don't get the above 'operation not permitted' message?

As you discovered, no one can change the permissions of a fat32 or ntfs partition in the filesystem. It has to be done in /etc/fstab. Run a search on "mount windows filesystem" and you will get all the answers you need.
Regards,
Bill

in your /etc/fstab file,
the line about your windows drive/partition

it needs the word user in it, before the two numbers at the end.

It might look a little like this (done from memory so forgive me if it is wrong):

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows/ vfat user,auto,rw 0 0

Its the user bit that's important.

Then just do a simple:

ln -s /mnt/windows/music /home/alex/Music

This will create a Music shortcut/alias/symbolic link in your home directory to the music stored in /mnt/windows/music

You'll have to change certain things to pertain to your setup but most of it should be similar.

HTH

Alex
P.S. You will have problems writing to your windows partition though. For example if you try to write ID3 tags. You'll need to add a umask= in the same place you put user before. I can't remember what number umask has to equal but search the boards. It's been posted before.

I've got a similar setup where I read and write mp3's to a windows partition.
umask=0 seems to work... this is from my fstab -

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

OK, my current entry for my /windows partition reads:

I seem to be able to access my /windows folder as a regular user and read and write stuff to it. Would I benefit at all from adding the 'user' option to my above fstab entry so that it reads 'defaults,user,umask=000' or is that not necessary?

And since I'm on an /etc/fstab tip. The entry for my cd burner reads:

Should I add a 'umask' in there as well, or change the 'ro' to an 'rw', or something like that, so that regular users can use the cd burner?

no, it's more low level than that, you just need to manage the rights on the block device itself... /dev/hdb