Step by step beginner's guide to making my VISTA NTFS files work on LINPUS

[LINPUS aspire one]

Today I purchased an ACER Aspire One mini notebook with the LINPUS OS installed.

I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER.

Having stated that;

I need a complete idiot's guide for how to get my USB external hard drive with all my Windows-based files to work on this new machine.

SOME of the helpful information would be:

-Why the machine initially recognized my two drives and said they failed to mount and now they are not even recognized?

-Why I received an error message about the HAL?

-a step by step guide how to make it work

... preferably letting me know where I can find the command line for starters.

Maybe something along the lines of "copy and pasting"
i.e: "do this, go here, do this, copy this, go here, paste this then do this"

All help is appreciated....

[waterhead]

First, welcome to the Linux Forums!

I don't have a guide, but I'll try and help.

In Linux, the commandline is called a terminal. You can actually get a terminal window by pressing the Ctrl+Alt+F1 keys. To get back to the desktop, usually Ctrl+Alt+F7 will do it, But try the other F keys if F7 doesn't work.

Now, you don't need to do that, because Linux has what are called terminal emulaters. They are programs that will display a terminal window. I can't find any info on what Linpus calls there's but look through the menu for something like that.

Once you can start a terminal window, enter this command. You may need root privileges to do this, so use sudo.

sudo fdisk -l

This should list all od the partitions on your drives. If you get this far, post back.

[LINPUS aspire one]

[user@localhost home]$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x537c5b79

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 14462 116165983+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14463 14593 1052257+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
[user@localhost home]$



this is where i'm at so far

but it still doesn't detect that I've even plugged in my external hard drive.

The guy at the shop told me the machine probably wouldn't support 4 or so devices plugged into one 4-way USB hub adapter.... it did recognize both partitions earlier but now it's not doing that. he seems to think i may have overloaded the output on the USB port but my wireless mouse seems to work just fin so I know I still have a working input on the USB drive and the light is still on on my USB hard drive.

[waterhead]

Try manually mounting it. When I plug in my USB pen drive, it auto mounts it as /dev/sdb1,so that would be a good place to start. First you need to create a folder to mount it to. I'll call it "windows", you can change the name to anything that you like, just no spaces allowed in the name.

sudo mkdir /windows

Now try to mount the USB drive.

sudo mount  /dev/sdb1 /windows

The drive should be mounted under the newly created /windows folder. It may be only accessable to root though, but it's a start.

[LINPUS aspire one]

[user@localhost home]$ sudo mkdir /windows
[user@localhost home]$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /windows
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
[user@localhost home]$


this is what i got back

And how exactly do switch to root...?

[LINPUS aspire one]

mount: you must specify the filesystem type
[user@localhost home]$ sudo fdisk -1
fdisk: invalid option -- 1

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
fdisk -v Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
[user@localhost home]$


and then this....^^^^^^^^

[waterhead]

OK, try it this way.

sudo mount -t auto /dev/sdb1 /windows

You may not need to be root, I just added that in case that happens, you would be expecting it.

[waterhead]

That' a lower case "L", not a number one. the "-l" means format the output as a list.

[LINPUS aspire one]

it still wants me to specify the filename

[LINPUS aspire one]

Usage: mount -V : print version
mount -h : print this help
mount : list mounted filesystems
mount -l : idem, including volume labels
So far the informational part. Next the mounting.
The command is `mount [-t fstype] something somewhere'.
Details found in /etc/fstab may be omitted.
mount -a [-t|-O] ... : mount all stuff from /etc/fstab
mount device : mount device at the known place
mount directory : mount known device here
mount -t type dev dir : ordinary mount command
Note that one does not really mount a device, one mounts
a filesystem (of the given type) found on the device.
One can also mount an already visible directory tree elsewhere:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or move a subtree:
mount --move olddir newdir
One can change the type of mount containing the directory dir:
mount --make-shared dir
mount --make-slave dir
mount --make-private dir
mount --make-unbindable dir
One can change the type of all the mounts in a mount subtree
containing the directory dir:
mount --make-rshared dir
mount --make-rslave dir
mount --make-rprivate dir
mount --make-runbindable dir
A device can be given by name, say /dev/hda1 or /dev/cdrom,
or by label, using -L label or by uuid, using -U uuid .
Other options: [-nfFrsvw] [-o options] [-p passwdfd].
For many more details, say man 8 mount .
[user@localhost home]$