External NTFS harddrive & permissions?

[BernardoFL]

Dear community,

I'm a linux newbie and I just got done installing Debian 3.1 (2.7.24 kernel) on my Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop. It took me a while to get all the basics going, and I'm now looking into connecting my Maxtor XT5000 external harddrive to linux. So far no problem, I hotplug it (USB2.0) linux finds it and I mount it to /home/bernardo/mp3 ... now here comes the problem. As root I can access the folder and the files, as any other user I cannot. So the only way for me so far to load the files (mianly mp3's) into an mp3 library/jukebox/player has been to log into GNOME as root. If I log in as "bernardo" I can't get to the folder/files, unless I open a terminal, and use "su" to get to the folder as root. I tried to change the permissions on the mounted filesystem using chmod but I get an error message telling me that the filesystem is read only (I understand linux supports NTFS as readonly only right?).

Any help would be highly appreciated!
Thanks!
Bernardo


p.s.: since I installed id3lib I can't log into gnome with my root account anymore, I get some error message about not finding a display... but using any other user works just fine... what's wrong?

[Monkeh]

NTFS is read only, yes. The kernel drivers have a lovely tendency to corrupt NTFS filesystems if you enable writing.

You'll need to add something like this to /etc/fstab..

/dev/sda1        /mnt/windows/E   ntfs        ro,user,auto,umask=002     1   0

You can change the mount point (second line) to whatever you like.

[BernardoFL]

Thanks a lot for your reply! Works perfectly...!
I also managed to resize the ntfs partition on the external hd to a minimal size and will transform the rest to fat, then move files over from ntfs to fat, transform the ntfs to fat and have a fat only external hd so I can use it both with windows and linux... How does that sound?

Thanks!
Bernardo

[Monkeh]

Sounds good, but I'd back up your data elsewhere, I don't trust resizing partitions.

[BernardoFL]

heh unfortunately I have over 150gigs of data on my 250gig hd and i don't know where the hell I could backup all that data!

Anyway, I just resized the partition with ntfsresize and everything went just fine! Only problem is that there was never a proper partition table on that hd apparently...

Anyway. Thanks! Bernardo

[chris-harry]

you can always borrow a tape drive from some where, even though they are sometimes slow, they are still great tools to backup with because of their great space... but i dont know if that'll suit you...

but i do agree with Monkeh, backup, never trust resizing partions... if you dont have a backup, more problems will occur (murphy's law)... you really dont have to back up the win OS... only your data...