Configuring disks so that users can read/write

[Jonny88]

Hi, i'm sure somebody can help with this. I've had to backup all my data and repartion my main HDD. I now have roughly a 85GB FAT32 and a 115 NTFS partition. The FAT32 partion was originally intended for all the music I have, so that I can easily share it between linux and windows. (I've left myself a fair bit of space for new music too.) The NTFS drive stores all my CDs/downloads for windows programs, as well as all my photos/graphic design work.The Problem I have is that since I have made these new partitions I have not been able to work with them properly under linux. Amarok cannot make changes to files - I get an error saying that they are not writeable, and when I try to change the drive permissions as superuser (GUI mode) I get a progress bar which stays at 0% and then goes away. Can anybody help me put this right? I NEED linux to be able to access the FAT32 partition, and NTFS access would be useful, but I could get by without. My only thought has been to give myself ROOT permissions, but I don't think thats the best way of doing this

Also, when Linux boots the drives are not mounted, rightclicking in mycomputer and choosing 'mount' casuses this error:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

but running partioner and changing the mount point of the NTFS drive allows them to mount. Thanks for any help, only been using linux for 6months

[devils casper]

Hi !

Linux doesn't support NTFS write access out of box. You have to install ntfs-3g package to enable it. Have you installed that package?

It very easy to auto-mount partitions at boot up and enable read/write access for all users.
Open terminal/konsole and execute this

su 
fdisk -l
df -h

Post output here.

[Jonny88]

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1305 10482381 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1306 4303 24081435 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 4304 19284 120334882+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 19285 30401 89297302+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1306 2154 6819561 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 2155 2416 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 2417 4303 15157296 83 Linux

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 6.5G 4.3G 1.9G 71% /
udev 506M 112K 506M 1% /dev
/dev/sda7 15G 1.4G 13G 11% /home
/dev/sda1 10G 4.6G 5.5G 46% /windows/C
/dev/hdb1 75G 71G 3.8G 95% /media/win

I have the package ntsfprogs installed

[devils casper]

sda1 is mounted at /windows/C folder and hdb1 at /media/win folder.
Log in as root and Execute this

mkidr /windows/D

Open /etc/fstab file and replace /dev/sda1 line with this

/dev/sda1 /windows/C ntfs-3g  defaults,umask=0  0  0

Add this code too

/dev/sda3 /windows/D ntfs-3g  defaults,umask=0  0  0

Save file and execute 'mount -a' command. Check /windows/C and /windows/D folders.
What filesystem does /dev/hdb1 has? its strange that /dev/hdb1 is not detected by fdisk command.

[Jonny88]

hda1 is a second HDD used to backup the computer under windows, its NTFS.
Thanks for your help so far, will let you know how I get on with this

[Jonny88]

seems that suse had become slightly confused as to what drives were in the computer....

Originally:

/dev/sda1 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/sda3 /media/windows vfat user,users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/sda4 /home/jonny/music ntfs user,users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /media/win ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0

Now:

/dev/sda1 /windows/C ntfs defaults,umask=0 0 0
/dev/sda3 /windows/D ntfs defaults,umask=0 0 0
/dev/sda4 /home/jonny/music vfat defaults,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /windows/E ntfs defaults,umask=0 0 0

basically suse thought that the fat32 drive was NTFS and vice-versa. Also had the wrong mount points on drives,
fixed it now (fingers crossed)
Any Ideas on how the fstab would become corrupt like this?
Cheers for all your help

ps ntfs-3g - where can I get this for suse, and do I need it? currently I can read NTFS only, but ntfs-3g is unrecognised as a filesystem

[devils casper]

AFAIK, Suse doesn't edit /etc/fstab automatically. It just create default /etc/fstab file during installation after probing all Partitions and attached Hard Disks.
Did you change Partition Structure after installation?

As I mentioned earlier, SuSe doesn't support NTFS write access out of box. You have to install ntfs-3g package to enable NTFS write access.
Follow instructions from here to install ntfs-3g.

[Jonny88]

yes, I have altered the structure since I installed.

Having looked at ntfs-3g I think I'm going to give it a miss. I'm not getting along great with the opensuse updater or zenworks or yast at the moment, and installing and updating packages has become a bit of a headache. I don't need ntfs write support desperately so I think I can wait untill suse 10.3 is released later in the year before I worry about any more updates

Cheers for all the help, I'll know what to do next time hopefully