Okay, so my windows paritition is NTFS. I enabled the modules in the kernel (2.4.18) and edited the /etc/fstab file to mount it.

If I log in as root, I can access my NTFS parition with no problem whatsoever.

If I log in as a normal user, however, I can't access the partition. Suggestions?

Could you post the NTFS partition line from /etc/fstab?

/dev/hda1 /mnt/WinXP ntfs user,ro,noatime 0 0

is what it says in /etc/fstab

Can you please paste the output of 'ls -l' of the /mnt directory? I'm suspecting that it has something to do with the WinXP directory.

How so? Login as root, or SU as root, and the directory works perfectly, and I can access any file within....

I'll post the results this evening when Im home on the PC....

If I'm not mistaken, it depends on the permissions for the directory. Look at the ownership and permission (should be 664 or something) for the directory and see if it permits other users to access it or not.

How good is the support for NTFS? I'm dual-booting 2k and XP now (NTFS for all drives) but intend on making it a triple boot with Linux very soon.

Linux reads NTFS partitions pretty well. An experimental write support is also available. I'm not sure about compressed files/directories or encryption, though.

So, how experimental is it? Anyone used and abused it yet to see how well it works?

The following should work for you:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/WinXP ntfs default,umask=000 0 0

You can try keeping the ro (read only) if you want to. I don't think you need noatime if you mount the filesystem with ro. The umask=000 essentially disables Linux file security. If have not tried writting to an ntfs directory from Linux, good luck if you try!

For more info on this type: "man mount" at the command prompt. If you do a "man fstab" read the description at the top. It explains that /etc/fstab is directing the mount command.

I would backup my data before trying...there's no telling what Linux may do with the data!

Well I tried using the /etc/fstab that you suggested, and had the same issue :-(

As for the results of the ls command...

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 Mar 21 11:52 WinXP/

That's the reason why it doesn't work - normal user doesn't have permissions to write to that directory. Use chmod -R uog+w WinXP to set write permissions to everyone.

What you have looks normal to me for any directory under /mnt. The 2 before root leads me to believe that your file system is not mounted. The 2 should become a 1 after it is mounted. When you mount the ntfs partition it should change the permissions to drwxrwxrwx for /mnt/WinXP if you put umask=000 in your fstab properly. Did you try just adding umask=000 to your current fstab entry?
Try looking at /etc/mtab to see which file systems are mounted. I don't know what else to tell you.

Shouldn't a normal user be able to read the files/directories with that permission? It's world readable and executable, just not writable...

Of course. I didn't read carefully enough.

Heh.. That's alrite It's why other users can't access the mount point that's a bit wierd.

ryejay98: Is that ls output before or after you have mounted the partition?

That's it, that was HUGE!!!!!!!

mb

The NTFS read support in Linux is fine, but the write support is very dangerous. Please don't use it. If you need advanced file system support in Linux, use ext3. If you want to share a partition between linux and windows and want to write with both, use fat32. NTFS is a windows technology and as such I think you should count yourself lucky that Linux can read it at all.