whats up with sharing my windows directory?

plebetan · 01-23-2009, 10:03 PM

when i installed ubuntu, it asked me if i wanted to make the documents for any of my windows accounts available from linux. most distros just give the option to put the windows partition into fstab, so i was curious about this feature. i selected my main windows account and now my home directory has the "My Documents" files from the windows account that i selected. i'm curious as to how this is implemented, since my windows partition doesn't seem to be mounted.

lurko · 01-23-2009, 11:50 PM

I expect the installer mounted your windows partition and copied the files during installation, before you even booted the new install for the first time.

Red_Shadow · 01-24-2009, 03:25 AM

Well, this is another proof of Ubuntu's nasty tendency to hide things from the (l)users.
However, it must be mounted somewhere, or this couldn't work. Ubuntu simply decided - on your behalf - that the mounting didn't need fstab.

As to the implementation.. Windows also have something similar to $HOME, so we must assume your $OHOME is simply mounted directly unto that. Do you have access to the rest of the Windows partition?

plebetan · 01-24-2009, 04:05 PM

lol, i just noticed that it somehow even grabbed my windows user icon(a snowflake) and is using it. when i run "mount" as root, i don't see sda1(my windows partition) mounted at all. the feature was called "sharing" account files or something, so i assume that it didn't just copy the files over, that would be pretty ridiculous imo. here is what mount looks like, i'm running the heron desktop version, 8.4.2 or something like that.

Code:

root@pzm:/home/pleb# mount
/dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.24-23-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/pleb/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=pleb)

plebetan · 01-24-2009, 06:46 PM

wow, after some experimentation it seems like ubuntu did in fact just copy the contents of my "my documents" folder into my home directory. what a weird feature, i think maybe those ubuntu devs have been drinking too much coffee.