Linux, WinXP, and Partitions

Hey, I've just reformatted my pc, and i went for putting WinXP Pro aswell as RedHat Linux 9 on the computer.

I have 2 seagate 80 gb hdds, and i went in and partitioned them druing the windows set up into 8 or so partitions for varios things, and left 10 gigs at the start of the non-windows drive for linux to go on.

Windows installed fine, and can obviously see all the partitions and access them, it can even see the linux partition, although it obviously cant access that.

When I got around to installing Linux, i went throguh the redhat gui installer, and got it to format the left over space in its file system, and call it the boot drive (i think thats what setting it to / meant), at the time it saw all the other partitons and their file systems just fine. Then linux went ahead and installed, and the boot selector and linux are working fine.

The problem is i cant find the other partitions in linux, so i cant acces that data. I think during the setup i should have mapped the partitions to folders for linux, or somthing like that, but i didnt.

Worse case scenario, i can re-install linux (although it took a while), but i was wondering if there was an app i could use or even a command that would get it to be able to see those other fat32 partitions

thanx for any help

Type these two commands into the terminal in Linux:

more /etc/fstab

more /proc/partitions

post the results back here.

However, in the mean time, check under /mnt , I think you might find something there! But you might have to manually edit /etc/fstab, which I can help you do if you post the information that I have asked for.

here are the results:


[redfoxtx@Dark-Violet-Linux redfoxtx]$ more /etc/fstab
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
[redfoxtx@Dark-Violet-Linux redfoxtx]$ more /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name rio rmerge rsect ruse wio wmerge wsect wuse running use aveq

34 0 78150744 hdg 13134 32309 361954 72970 2437 5899 66904 202400 -19 271370 38216282
34 1 1 hdg1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
34 2 10241437 hdg2 13 71 168 110 0 0 0 0 0 110 110
34 3 28161945 hdg3 13 71 168 80 0 0 0 0 0 80 80
34 4 28169977 hdg4 13 71 168 120 0 0 0 0 0 120 120
34 5 11574769 hdg5 13093 32090 361434 72640 2437 5899 66904 202400 0 49380 276340
33 0 78150744 hde 56 296 704 420 0 0 0 0 -19 273450 37946142
33 1 43520053 hde1 13 71 168 100 0 0 0 0 0 100 100
33 2 1 hde2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
33 5 10241406 hde5 13 71 168 100 0 0 0 0 0 100 100
33 6 14137168 hde6 13 71 168 80 0 0 0 0 0 80 80
33 7 10241406 hde7 13 71 168 90 0 0 0 0 0 90 90


and i having a look in mnt had been my first guess, but alas it only shows my two cd rom drives and my floppy disk drive:

[redfoxtx@Dark-Violet-Linux redfoxtx]$ ls /mnt
cdrom cdrom1 floppy

ok, where do you think your FAT32 partition that you want to mount is located?? is it hde1, or example?

if you don't know, then try to mount the partitions in a command prompt.

first, make a mount point:

mkdir /mnt/fat32

now, try to mount what you think is your partition like this:

mount -t vfat /dev/hde7 /mnt/fat32

cd /mnt/fat32

ls

...??do you see your files? if you do, post back here with the partition device name, i.e. hde7, etc....

I will then tell you how to add that info into your /etc/fstab so that the partition is mounted automatically when you boot

Eh, fdisk -l /dev/hd* (replace the * with a letter) produces more readable output than cat /proc/partitions ;)

erm, yeah! :o

I should stop passing on more of my bad habbits!

ok, that worked, looks like the partitions i want are:

hdg2
hdg3
hdg4

hde5
hde6
hde7

They're all vfat (im ignoring the ntfs one i use for windows as i presumer linux cant access that)

Now, do i have to mount them all to the /mnt./ directory, or can i mount it to anywhere i like?

Linux can read ntfs partitions (if the support is built into kernel, and most distros have it as a module). Yes, you can mount them anywhere you like. It's just not smart to mount to /dev/null :giddy:

you can mount them anywhere that you like. Of course, if there is anything in the directory that you mount the device in, you won't get that stuff, just the stuff in the device.

to get your system to automatically mount a device on boot, you need to add an entry to /etc/fstab

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

is one of your existing lines, you want another one, thus:

/dev/hdg2 /mnt/mydrive vfat noauto 0 0

try something like that for each device. remember, you will need to create the mount points (in this case, /mnt/mydrive) before you reboot so that on next boot you don't get an error.

But RedHat doesn't support NTFS so how would you go aboot getting Linux to read a NTFS drive?

Red Hat's kernel is compiled by default so that it has nearly everything in modules. You can install ntfs module with insmod ntfs from command line. You can also check which filesystems are supported with cat /proc/filesystems.

Remember that that NTFS support is read only. You get write access NTFS support in Linux, but its very dangerous and not recommended as it can cause data loss.

phantasm, read only is fine as long as i can copy files off the winxp hd i need. mic, when i ran the cat syntax it didn't list the ntfs file system and redhat's own website said it doesn't support ntfs because of legal issues w/ M$

Certainly, NTFS read support is natively support by the linux kernel, so you can either try loading the module in the way that Mictlantecuhtli mentioned, or you can recompile the kernel to either have NTFS support as a module or actually compile it into the kernel itself.

If NTFS support has been left out by Red Hat, then you will have to recompile the kernel, I guess.

This will involve a 30MB download from www.kernel.org , the file you are looking for is here:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.22.tar.gz

On broadband, this should take about 10-15 minutes or less.

Download this file, and post back here when you have. I will then tell you how to recompile your kernel. But you should get the latest kernel source if possible please first.

NTFS support is in RH kernels, but not enabled by default. You will have to recompile.

I suppose it could be MS putting pressure on RH. SuSE (a german company) ships its linux with NTFS support builtin.

In fact, if you did a full install, you will have the kernel sources under /usr/src

folder will be called something like linux-2.4.20 or something...???

You should be able to go right in there and compile the kernel.

I noticed I didn't have 2.4.22 on my home machine, so later in the week I might recompile and write down what I am doing at the time, and then make a short guide post on how to do this.

I will be too busy with SQL exam this week to do it right away.

ok phantasm, i d/led the new kernel. how do i recompile the kernel? i tried doing it once and had to reinstall rh9 cuz it wouldn't boot

Heh. Since you got it not to boot, then it means you managed to compile and install something. I'm sure Phantasm is coming up with a 3 page instruction on Linux kernel compiling, so I'm not going to attempt any fine literature here.

When you install a new kernel, always make sure you have the option to boot the old kernel in case the new one didn't come out right.

I'm not Phantasm66, but anyhow:

Extract the kernel to, say, /usr/src.

Go to kernel directory in command line:

cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.22

To make sure everything is how it should be by default, do

make mrproper

That isn't necessary, and it'll slow things down a lot if you're compiling the same kernel for nth time as it deletes all compiled files.

To configure the kernel in command-line mode, do

make menuconfig

To configure the kernel in graphical mode, do

make xconfig

After you've saved the configuration, it informs about the next step:

make dep

After that, compile the kernel:

make modules;make install;make modules_install

That'll compile the kernel and install it to /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22 with a symlink to /boot/vmlinuz (along with other stuff).

If you're using LILO to boot, you need to edit /etc/lilo.conf a bit to tell the bootloader about the new kernel. After editing LILO conf file, run /sbin/lilo for the changes to take effect.

If you're using GRUB, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst instead. With GRUB, there's no need to anything else.

Reboot and enjoy your new kernel (if everything went well).

WOOHOO!!! I'm so glad i got ntfs support on RH9 w/out recompiling the kernel. I used the Linux-NTFS project rpm and their instructions. got it installed in 10 mins. Now i have to get my wireless g520 card to work so i can have net access.