Greetings

After being a typical mainstream windows user for several years , I've finally realized that getting linux has become a must (for various reasons)
to make a long story short , I installed Suse 10.1 in a double boot config with windows xp.
actually almost everything would be going fine , if there wasn't this shocking fact that I'm NOT able to write to several backup partition (which are either ntfs/fat32)

so far I've tried everything that would seem logical to fix this problem , starting from disabling the "mount read only" option in yast partitioner to tweaking with the fstab file.

but nothing worked , instead I'm getting random unpredictable behaviour from the
drives sometimes displaying messages like "Operation denied . read-only disk"
and other times saying "operation failed , etc/fstab configuration does not allow unprivileged operation" (the later message comes for example when I try accessing usb flash drives)
btw I did also try to use "defaults,rw,exec" as options in fstab to fix this
without success , I dunnu maybe I should unmount before doing this , i have no clue but it , guess that's where i need some help.
there are as well other dilemnas , like that concerning the inability of playing mpeg or that the mp3's sound muffled and partially distorted etc (but for now the highest priority is solving the Partition issue , which literally dirves me insane!)

thanks in advance for feedback

UPDATE:
I guess now after WIKIng and conducting experiments all the day I've found the reason why this write error was happening (it's apparently this NTFS file system , which seems to be not fully supported in OS'es other than windows)

An example of a self-resolved problem lol , anyways there is something else that I'd like to mention though it's not such a big deal , Which is that the partition in question (now a fat32 drive) shows rubbish (between quotes is what i get "-Qh"?HG'??") in the volume field when clicking properties
of the mount folder , Why is this happening ?

another question , How do I config Suse to set removable storages such as usb disks to be executable when they are mounted by the system ?

Appreciating any Replies

So you installed SuSE 10.1 on an existing Windows XP computer and the XP Partition was NTFS, which is not natively supported by Linux. Later, you converted the Windows XP partition to a FAT32 volume, but now the Volume Label has garbage in it. Is that correct?

First, did you change the partition type in the fstab file in /etc folder? You need root security to edit this file. You would expect the line to look something like this.

/dev/hda1 /windows/C vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0

The hda1, will be your actual hard drive partition and the vfat said ntfs at first and must be changed if you converted the partition to FAT32. Check out this file and make the right changes then reboot. Remove the ro command if present.

If fstab is correct then you can go to "My Computer", Right Click on the FAT32 partition, pick properties and simply enter a new Volume Label. This can be done in Windows or Linux. If this does not work, then the conversion of the partition may have not gone as planned.

Lastly there are utilities that allow you to read and wright to NTFS partition. I use a $40 utility from Paragon Software but free alternatives also exist.

Thank You,

Yes that's right , actually I changed the partitioning from 2 Ntfs drives into a 4 partition setup.
the first and second partitions on disk are primary ext3 (/Boot and / respectively)
the third is a primary Ntfs which holds windows (left unmounted in linux)
and the 4th is the partition in question that was making trouble (previously NTFS , now FAT32)
Well , the fstab entry for the partition is as follows:
/dev/sda6 /data vfat exec,rw 1 2
is it fine this way?
Btw , I've to mention that conversion didn't bring any results at the beginning , to be honest the first think that I tried out was to change it to ext3 which for some reason made it behave as before.
I also remember that I changed the partition several times to Fat with the Yast partitioner but the drive would always appear as NTFS when I boot in windows , I guess that's really weird.
Finally , I decided to re-format the whole partition using FAT32 and after this time it started working as it's supposed to (didn't really care about the data Loss since I've an external 280GB disk which I used as a backup drive ,though transfering about 40GB of files back and forth was really time consuming)

I read about them in wiki but according to my understanding they aren't fully secure and compatible with the MS secret kept NTFS specs , Nonetheless I'd really appreciate any oppurtunity that would safely handle NTFS drives in linux

at Last , the garbage on the label was cleared and replaced with a custom label , after I did change it from windows (thanks for the tip ) but how can I change the volume label in linux? and isn't the volume supposed to display the total partition size?

ah an before I forget , i'd like to ask How to configure linux to set removable storages (such as USB flash drives and such ) As executable by default??

I would say that a line that looks like this would work the best for the FAT32 partition:

/dev/sda6 /data vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0

Changing the partition type has no real affect, except it may not work, until the drive is formatted, which sets up the main root folder or directory.

I did say in my last message that if fstab is correct then you can go to "My Computer" in SuSE Linux, Right Click on the FAT32 partition, pick properties and simply enter a new Volume Label to make the change.

As for NTFS partition writing using Paragon's NTFS version 6, it is said to be fully compatible with NTFS partitions, however they are doing that. I can only say that I have been able to read and write to the NTFS partitions and that both Windows XP and Windows Vista still startup correctly and can see the changes that I have made.

As far as your last question "ah an before I forget , i'd like to ask How to configure linux to set removable storages (such as USB flash drives and such ) As executable by default??", what is it you are really wanting to do? You can add a USB drive to fstab if you want it to be mapped automatically at boot up.

Thank You,

Done!
oh , so you mean that the only way to change a partition's file system (e.x from NTFS to Fat32)
can only be done by formatting it (i.e erasing data etc...) ?
OK , you're referring to the My computer icon in the KDE desktop environment.
actually , I'm using Gnome at the moment.
Hmmmm , but how do i add a USB drive in fstab?
considering that I want every/any usb drive that is mounted to be set as executable and not a just a particular one (say sdb1 )
probably I should config this , but I'm not sure:
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0

Cheers

Adding a USB drive to fstab is no different than any other drive. You just got to know what the physical drive designation will be and were you want it mapped in the Linux file system. I am booting from an external usb hard drive and here is the first part of my fstab file:

/dev/sdb2 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sdb3 /Software vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/sdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /Windows ufsd users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0

The ufsd is my NTFS driver that allows full read/write abilities to a Windows Native format partition.

Thank You,

OK , that made alot of things much clearer!
Thank you for taking time answering my questions