First Linux Problem, Yay!

[cracked]

i finally tried out linux tonight. it is mandrake 9.0. ill admit, its very confusing for someone who has always used a windows environment, but i am more than willing to learn, as my hate for the devil(microsoft) grows everyday. my install went pretty good, after i finally got my partitions the way i needed them. i am dualbooting along with winxp pro. my problem is this: i have a "files" partition that i keep all my documents, etc. on, and nothing else. it is a fat32 partition. unless i am just missing something, linux i not finding that partition. maybe i dont know where to look. could somebody help me please? my other partitions are a 8gb windows partition, 5gb for linux, 200mb for linux swap(i have no idea if 200mb is too big or too small, i just thought it sounded good), and the rest of a 40gb hdd for the files partition. all are on the same physical drive. thanks for your help, and be warned, many more questions to come!

drew

[Epyon9283]

I don't think the fat32 partitions get mounted automatically. Can't be sure though.

[cracked]

all i want is for that partition to be visible in winxp and linux, other than that, i am willing to change it as needed to do this.

drew

[Whir]

I think you have to mount the drive first, or add it to the mount list somehow. I don't know which file to add that to. But to mount the drive you would create a directory in /mnt called win or whatever, then on xterm do 'mount -t vfat /dev/hda /mnt/win' assuming your Fat32 partition is hda. I don't know what it would be on yours system. And I think I'm missing something there too. I'm sure one of the more knowledgeable people will come along and be more adequate!

[pbharris]

i hope this helps

[mickwish]

As long as you have a working Samba set up, you can also use a nice Linux windows shares manager called LinNeighborhood (http://www.bnro.de/~schmidjo/). Once it's set up, it will automatically find any windows shares on your PC or your LAN, and allow you to mount and read them.

Hope this helps, too.

Cheers
Mick

[cracked]

mickwish, what is a Samba???

pbharris, i think your way will work except that i tried editing that file and it acts as if it is read-only, it will not let me save my changes to it.

i tried opening the directory mnt/ but the "explorer" window freezes everytime i try to open mnt/

any other ideas?

thanks!

drew

[Cody]

mickwish: he is dualbooting, and unless he wants to do some crazy VMware setup just to share files, I think he just needs to mount the directory

try this:
1) open a terminal and type su
2) enter your "root password"
3) type mkdir /mnt/win
4) type mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/win

That should do it for you, assuming your hard drive and windows partition are the first one listed.

Cody

[cracked]

actually, i think it said somewhere in there that the partition im trying to get is hda7. does that sound right? but thanks, i will try this.

drew

[herura]

To edit the fstab file you need to be logged on as root. Mandrake during its install will set it up to automatically log you in as a user with non root privileges so you will get the error. You can log out and log back in as root or you can open a terminal window, type su and then the root password when it asks. This will allow you to start a text editor with root privileges and edit the file. I have never tried to mount a fat32 partition in Linux, but it is not difficult. One thing to remember, Linux does not have drives like windows, it uses mount points and they can exist anywhere in the system. Its like having your D: drive in the My documents folder. Usually I add data mount points in the users home directory, which is the same as the My Documents folder in Windows. When you try to open mnt/ it probably is not freezing, just stuck trying to access any mount points that are in there. Eventually it would return an error or complete the task, but while you have the fstab file open check if there are any entries for removable media that mount in mnt/. CD and Floppy drives usually go there and if you have a CD in the drive when you click mnt/ it iwll try to access the disk. If the format is one Linux does not u nderstand it could give this behavior.
Good Luck

[cracked]

cody, i tried this and it said "hda7 already mounted in /mnt" but it will not let me access the /mnt. the window just freezes everytime i click on mnt/. what is wrong with it?

thanks!

drew

[mickwish]

Oops, don't need Samba for shares on the same drive. Only for those on a network. Sorry.

Once the entry is correctly in fstab, use the Disk Management feature in the GUI (gnome or KDE) under system settings (I think) in the menu somewhere. Just look around until you find it.

Easier that way.

Hope that helps

Cheers
Mick

[nukes]

It should automatically mount your windows drives.
In mandrake, it should come up as /mnt/win_c or if it is you're only fat32 partition it may be /mnt/windows.You should also have read only access to your ntfs drive under /mnt/nt.
In linux, if you are logged in as a normal user, it will not let you change anything outside your home dir.
try logging in as root and navigating to /mnt/
Take note that all the supermount devices (CDROMs and floppies) get probed when you change to you're /mnt/ dir. Does it freeze properley (as in the taskbar stops responding)
What gui are you using? KDE or Gnome?

[Redwolf]

Hmmm....try going into a terminal and typing the following:

cd /mnt
ls

post the results.

[jkrohn]

You do not need root or su rights to navigate the /mnt directory.

Jkrohn

[lost-and-found]

there shouldn't be any special setup for linux to see the FAT32 Partition, it should detect it automatically. Try going to the /mnt directory, and see if the partition is visible there, then you can make a link to it on the desktop for fast access.

[Redwolf]

on my Linux, the partition is called /mnt/windows . It should be there.

[jkrohn]

there shouldn't be any special setup for linux to see the FAT32 Partition, it should detect it automatically

Say what? No linux doesn't auto detect anything RH 8 did not auto detect or auto mount my fat32 partitions. Mandrake *should* detect it on install and set it to auto mount in /etc/fstab, but once that is set, that's all that is gonna happen. In order to get anythign else to work you'll have to add it there or manually do it.

Please note that the *installer* will auto detect and add the entry to fstab, NOT linux

Jkrohn

[lost-and-found]

jkrohn, yeah, it automoundts in drake 9, at least for me, both of my windows partitions, my C and my D drive, as /mnt/windows_C and /mnt/windows_D

[cracked]

the problem now has changed to this:

no matter what user i am logged in as, root or otherwise, the /mnt directory will not open. if i click on it, the window stops responding. everything else works fine still but that specific window will do nothing.

also a separate problem, i tried playing some of the games that are included suh as tux racer. they seem to run fine but about once a second the game will freeze, then resume. it acts like a game would run on an old or slow system, but my system is fairly high-end(1.4ghz, 256mb ddr, gf3ti200) why are these games going so slow?

thanks a lot!!

drew