[Drool King]

Hiyall!! I need help on how to mount my hard disk. I have WinXP and RH9. WinXp is on my C drive (hda) and my RH9 is on my other drive (hdb5). I want to access my data drive (which is the first partition on my hdb) which is shown from browsing the hardware as hdb1. I went to etc/fstab and added a line to mount it but after rebooting the system it will say mountpoint cannot be found.

Please help!

[FyberOptyx]

did you create the directory that the mount point refers to ?

[karanmurali]

Check the type of file sytem you are mounting i.e it is EXT2 ,EXT3 or FAT.Since Windows XP may be in FAT or NTFS file system.
specify the correct file system to be mounted in the /etc/fstab

[Drool King]

Karanmurali - I tried this

mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/dos (vfat)
and this
mount -t auto /dev/hdb1 /mnt/fat32 (vfat)

But I still cannot access the drive

Fyber - I also went to my /etc/fstab and added this

/dev/hdb1 /mnt/dos vfat defaults 0 0

and it still would not mount

I dont know why because when I run the Gnome Hardware Browser all the hardisk are seen (hda1 - WinXp and hdb1 (data) and hdb5 my RH9).

My RH9 is on the same HD as the one that I'm trying to mount. Please help...

[FyberOptyx]

do you actually have a directory called /mnt/dos ?

[Drool King]

Fyber - there is no directory /mnt/dos. But isn't it that you're suppose to mnt that hd/partition because it is formatted in winxp (/mnt/dos). I looked (used df) and found that the drive/partition that I'm trying to access has an * on it . Is this because it is on the 1st track of my hard disk (my RH9 is on the same hd but on a different partition - it is tagged as hdb5.

I thank you guys for taking the time out to help me.

DK

[tuubaaku]

You need a directory called /mnt/dos.

[the_unforgiven]

Originally Posted by Drool King

Fyber - there is no directory /mnt/dos. But isn't it that you're suppose to mnt that hd/partition because it is formatted in winxp (/mnt/dos). I looked (used df) and found that the drive/partition that I'm trying to access has an * on it . Is this because it is on the 1st track of my hard disk (my RH9 is on the same hd but on a different partition - it is tagged as hdb5.

I thank you guys for taking the time out to help me.

DK

Well, the way it goes is you always mount a partition onto an EXISTING directory in the filesystem.

UNIX traditionally has been designed to treat all things as files - be it a device (which are called as special files in UNIX terminology), a directory (which becomes a directory special file) or a normal file.

So, when you mount a partition, it becomes accessible as part of the unform filesystem and you can use the same tools - like cp, ls etc - on it.

Linux derives from this same philosophy.

So, you see, you need to have the mountpoint (the directory where you want to mount the partition) already created.

[FyberOptyx]

lets split this up:
mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 = what to mount
/mnt/dos (vfat) = where to mount it, ie. where is can be accessed
to be able to mount /mnt/dos it needs to exist

mkdir -p /mnt/dos

same for any other mounts, create the directory

[ankit_iiita]

As fyberoptyx said first u want to create a directory in the
/mnt directory
mkdir /mnt/dos would do
check your hard drive type
redhat do not support NTFS partition
u need a software for that
after this as root type
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos
check if its mounted then u need to make it permanent by editing the /etc/fstab file
instead of writing vfat try auto it worked for me and do properly save the file i hope this solves your problem