My XP uses NTFS partitions. I am having trouble making heads or tails of doing this on a single machine. Am I better advised to go for Samba (I have common router) which I don't understand either.

I appreciate some help for either or both routes.

What exactly are you trying to do ?

David

The last part of your message implies that you have two machines, one linux and one XP. The first part of your message says "on a single machine" which implies that you are dual booting Linux / XP on the same machine. If you have two machines connected on the network, then install and configure Samba on the Linux machine, and share the folder you want to write to on the XP machine.

Look for a samba-doc package if it's available. It supplies a book "Samba3-ByExample" which has example samba setups you can base your configuration on. If you can't find such a package then go to the samba.org website. You can download it from their. I had purchased these books at a bookstore before I found that the same books. I don't mind the I supported Samba that way! I learned things about Windows networking I hadn't known before, such as how Win XP home edition won't work in a domain.

If you are dual booting, you can mount the windows NTFS partition in linux to read. I don't know how reliable writing is even if your kernel supports it. It may still be better to create a fat32 partition that both OS's can write to when you are dual booting.

Thanks. I do have 2 machines. One with XP and Linux and the other one with 98 2ed. and Linux. (I have written some DOS programs that I want to be able to run.)

I am dual booting both. The XP with System Commander 8 and the other with "grub". There I can read the windows files from Linux ok. The "XP" is a NTFS monster.

I want to use the linux in the 98 machine as backup
for the Linux in the XP computer, particularly when a Linux upgrade comes along.

I will take a look at/or for the book you suggested.

I am a structural engineer, I use computers, but am not a computer expert

Thanks again