mounting or drive access troubles

[cidviscous]

hi, everybody.... i'm a relatively new linux user (one prior install of fedora maybe two years ago and some live cd's) and first time poster.

i'm trying to get off windows as my primary os, and so far i'm about half-way there. the trouble i'm running into at the moment is my apparent inability to control my mounting/permissions.

my setup:

p4 class machine
fresh net install of debian 4.0 etch.

20gb ide hard drive (3 ext3 partitions--boot, swap, home)
120gb sata drive (99gb ntfs partition, 15gb unpartitioned)
150gb usb hard drive (ntfs)
2gb ipod nano (2nd gen, previously run on windows)

here's the deal. i've been trying to get this to work all day. root could read the usb hard drive (but not regular users), so i tried a chmod -R 755 on usb (and usb0 as well 'cause it showed up twice, both looking identical). after this, regular users could look through the directory tree, but not actually read any of the files--chmod gave the error "Operation not supported", which i suppose is because it's an ntfs drive and thus not writeable (though, i am thinking about installing ntfs-3g, i'm just not sure if it's safe).

the sata drive shows up under the disks administration tool as an ntfs partition, but cannot seem to be accessed (even by root).

the ipod doesn't even show up in any lists i've found (nor is it recognized by gtkpod), though the ipod itself realizes it's plugged in and warns not to be uplugged without being unmounted.

can anybody point me in the right direction? also, can anybody comment on the safeness of ntfs-3g? thanks in advance...

-cid

also, i'm sorry if this topic is a dead horse--i searched but didn't find anyone else with my same symptoms...

[Freston]

Welcome!

also, i'm sorry if this topic is a dead horse--i searched but didn't find anyone else with my same symptoms...

I'm going to take a guess here. You've probably been looking for your 'symptoms' as a defect, where it may very well be normal operation for your system to behave as it does.

That's OK, Windows and Gnu/Linux are very different at this part. I can see your reasoning with the chmod command, but mount permissions are stored in fstab. Can you post the contents of fstab?
Type:

cat /etc/fstab

Also, you can verify if your kernel recognizes your iPod by typing the following after plugging it in:

dmesg | tail

Further, I don't know if the net-install of Debian carries native support for ntfs. A quick google leads me to believe it should work. But first, let's have a looksy at your fstab.