Auto-Mounting

[Alien]

I'm trying to figure out how to auto-mount upon linux boot my WindowsXP partition. I've got Linux on hda, and WinXP on hdb, but I can't figure out how to launch the filesystem properly (NTFS). Searching has become futile...

My searches indicate however that I'd want to edit my /etc/fstab file which is:

/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
/mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
/mnt/cdrom2 /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
/mnt/floppy /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=vfat,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,codepage=850 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

Does anybody know what exactly I need to put to load my WinXP's NTFS on hdb?

Thanks!

[Choozo]

You need NTFS support either compiled into your kernel, or compiled as a loadable module in order to make it work. And it's not recommended yet to do anything else but read from a NTFS partition - mount it readonly (don't write to it, or you may hose the whole NTFS partition).

I've heard that RedHat don't include NTFS support in any way in their versions, but let the users recompile the kernel for this themselves (due to NTFS support being deemed highly unstable and risky).

Which distro/version are you using?

[Pingüi]

yeah, once you have NTFS compiled into the kernel all you have to do is put an entry for your windows partition in /etc/fstab.

You should read the man for fstab... you do this by typing "man fstab" at the console. Its pretty simple so I think you'll get the hang of it once you read the man page. Remember that the directory where you want to mount your partition MUST exist. Then all you do to mount the partition is type "mount /mnt/x" "x" is the name of the directory that you specified in fstab for mounting the windows partition.

Hope this helps, and remember to search google.com/linux to get faster answers to your problems.

[Alien]

-- BTW- I'm using Mandrake 8.2 --

Wow this is tons of help! THANK YOU! :) I'll have to "man fstab" when I get home from work later - and I've also noted to mount it as read only.

Do you all know where I'd want to look in the kernel to enable the NTFS so I can get this done -- or should I just poke around until I see NTFS (gawd I'm really new, sorry)?

Afterwards, of course, I'll compile the new kernel, then (after reading the man fstab) I can hopefully get it mounted as read only.

Another question - when shutting down or rebooting, I get the error: Unmounting NFS [Failed]. At this point the computer halts (I can type on the screen, but no response or hard drive activity to complete the shut down). When I force a reboot, it has to check/repair the filesystem because it wasn't properly unmounted. Any suggestions here?

Thank you again!!!

[Choozo]

Try the mount option first and see if you get an error message about NTFS not being supported (Mandrake is usually on the "bleeding edge", so they may have that support already compiled in). If it's already compiled as a module, you may have to do a 'insmod module_name' (check with the mandrake site, or www.mandrakeuser.org (http://www.mandrakeuser.org) for additional tips).

As for recompiling your kernel - if needed - read (and *understand*) the kernel HOWTO's found at www.linuxdocs.org, (http://www.linuxdocs.org,) the kernel NHFs on this site, before even starting.

The error message about NFS (Network File System) means that you may have enabled NFS shares(?) but don't use them(?). Check which services you have set to start at bootup (found somewhere in the Control Panel).

Cheers, and good luck :)