Howto mount HDA1 persistantly

Hi galume. Can you please give us more information on how your system is set up? What version of Mepis are you using and is it actually installed on your system or are you using the Live CD? Can you paste the layout of your /etc/fstab file so that we can see how Mepis thinks your system is arranged? What are you using as your bootmanager? Give us a little more info and I'm sure we can help you fix-er-up

Jon

If your W2K has NTFS, then you'd want a line in your /etc/fstab that looks something like this (edit as root):

/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ntfs user,exec,ro,umask=0222 0 0

The key thing is to make sure the line doesn't say "noauto" in the 4th part, if you want the drive to mount automatically at boot. Otherwise, if you don't want to automount at boot:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ntfs noauto,user,exec,ro,umask=0222 0 0

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

My difficulty with accessing the NTFS partition of my dual-boot XP/MEPIS machine from MEPIS is that the NTFS partition wants to mount RO. So far, no cajoling of /etc/fstab, or any combination of su'd chmod's has helped. The device wants to mount RO, and only RO (and refuses to reform).

Any insights?

mhinton539, NTFS partitions are mounted Read-Only because it is possible to break the file system if you write to it. MS does not provide documentation on the full specs. It is possible to write (occasionally) with safety but it's not a Linux thing, it's an MS thing.

The general, safe way to do things if you must share info across these two operating systems is to create a FAT32 partition that both OSes can read.

Jon

Jon -

Aha. I'll go create a FAT32 partition for Linux<->XP sharing. Thanks for the insight -- I'd been pulling hair out for a while over that one.

Cheers,
Mark

Ah, my newbie-ness is showing.

Since my dual-boot configuration needs a FAT32 partition (for schlepping data between XP and MEPIS), I fired up QTPartEd to do the work. I reduced the size of an existing partition; QTPartEd obediantly did the job, and I now have a nice big block of continuous free space.

But QTPartEd does *NOT* want to allow me to create the new partition I need. It's happy with a big block of "free" space, but doesn't want to do anything with it!

What am I missing, folks?

--Mark

Mark, QTParted is kinda thick sometimes

After making a change, apply the change, let it do its thing, then exit QTParted and reboot. If you have a brand new hard drive then you can make lots-o-changes at the same time. But when the disk is in use, has already been partitioned, or the stars are in the wrong place then you have to do-it-one-partition-at-a-time

Oh, one other thing. You can only have four physical partitions. If you need more than that, you will need to convert your 4th partition to an "extended" partition and place "logical" partitions within. If that's the case, and you need help, post back.

Jon

It could be how your partitions are laid out...

Only 4 primary partitions are allowed - or 3 primary and 1 extended partition which can hold many more logical partitions.

So lets say for example, Windows is hda1, Mepis / is hda2, swap is hda3, and then you have an extended partition which has a logical partition hda5 for /home.
If you resize hda1 or hda2 , you have no more primary partitions left to make a new one. The only place you can make a new partition is inside the extended partition.

I've made that mistake in the past and ended up wiping all but hda1 and starting over, making sure I made the extended portion as the second entry.

I have the exact same problem as galume, but when I change the content of /etc/fstab, the original content comes back after a reboot, and what I changed had no effect, whatever I changed. Can you help me?

Satanik (what a name! )

Did you edit /etc/fstab as root? Changes become permanent only when you edit as root. Also, move your changes (are they meant to automount?) to the Static section. Keeping them in the Dynamic section of /etc/fstab won't do anything.

Regards,

-STYNGERSMASH-

"Share the world."

What do you mean by static and dynamic sections??? Sorry, but I'm a newbie... And of course, I did it as root.

By the way, I'm not at all satanist, my nickname is the result of a long story.

You will find a line in fstab that begins as,

# Dynamic entries below,

Anything above that line is yours to modify and will remain static. Anything below that line is for MEPIS to modify each time it boots.

When a dynamic entry is moved to the static section, it should lose the "users" option. Here are three examples that I use:

/dev/hda9 /winfat vfat defaults,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /mnt/hdb6 reiserfs defaults,noatime 0 0
/dev/hdb7 /datarchive ext3 defaults,noatime 0 0

If you use a mount point name as I do above, be sure to create the correspondinf directory first. And give the directory proper access for users.