[Niels82]

Hey

I wanted to try and run winxp on fat32 so i can access it from linux.. im fairly new to this and heard it was not an excellent idea but wanted to give it a shot anyhow.

My hd is 160 gb so I actually got 3 partitions. #1 linux #2 windows #2 other stuff (fat32 also)

I can access #2 and #3 from winxp, and #1 and #2 from linux..

When, in linux, trying to enter #2 i get "access denied" as a normal user. As SU, super user/root, I get in ..

Since I wanna play the music I got there for example, I wanna use my music player to get these files of course. I can get in, however the folders appear as files, and I can not execute any files inside my players..

How can i set access to this partition for other users than root? And whats wrong with the folders and such inside the applications ? From my konsole the folders and files are organized as I set them up in windows, so its only wrong in "browse for file" inside some player ..

If i gotte reformat it thats not a problem, I dont really have much and its fast to redownload stuff so ..

[taeuler]

To access the drive as a normal user you will need to edit the file /etc/fstab. Save a backup first!

For your drive there should be a line that looks something like this:
/dev/hdax /mnt/hdax reiserfs noauto 0 1

change it to this:
/dev/hdaz /mnt/hdax reiserfs noauto,users 0 1

That should give you access as user.

I'm not sure about the music, but my guess would be that is they don't play they might be in WMA which is a microsoft proprietary format which is not supported in Linux.

Also Windows does not recognize Linux partions.

[danleff]

The solution would be, of course, to store all the music files on one of the fat32 partition, then they can be accessed in Windows or Linux.

[Dapper Dan]

See below..

[Dapper Dan]

Just a word about file systems. Fat 32 is the scum of the earth of file systems, and you can loose EVERYTHING in the wink of an eye! Just like that! It's happened to me and others I know. I lost almost a whole year's worth of irreplaceable information from my job because I stored the information on a Fat32 partition. I have a friend who lost a couple of thousand Mp3's for the same reason. Fat32 can, and will suddenly scatter everything to the wind without warning! Do yourself a BIG favor and put those songs on either NTFS, (far superior to Fat32), or one of the Linux file systems. You should be able to play MP3s and WAVs from Windows/NTFS while in Linux. I'm not sure about the Windows music format. When I was dual booting XP and Mandrake 9, I could read Windows files from Linux with no problem, I just couldn't write to them.

[jimf43]

They are suposed to be moving right along with the write part of access to NTFS, however, many of the sources that I've read think this is a 'very bad' idea which will never be entirely reliable. Use a NTFS format for everything except a small transfer volume. That works well in getting necessary files from Linux to Windows without much risk.

Going the other way... There actually are a couple of Windows utilitys that will read linux ext2 files and last I checked they were working on one that will read ext3. I haven't looked at these in a while, so, I'll check the progress when I get a chance and get back.

[Niels82]

Ok..

I wanted to reformat it in any event so I did both my linux partition and my partition where I wanna store my stuff. Both windows and the partition i wanna store things are fat32.
I can make them both NTSF if its a clear way how to get this working so i can read those files also in linux. Everything on my comp us currently pretty fresh installed and i dont have anything i even care to backup on any drive. So Id really like to make a good system now so that i can start using it "for real"

I tried with my current setup, windows can see the other fat32, and so can linux .. BUT i stored a few files there to check, and linux can not see any files there .. why is that ?

Anyway, Id like your advice on how I should set this up best possible. I can change any of the filesystems the way you say, i just dont have enough experience to know whats best here.

[danleff]

Again, opinions will differ, but even the current distros do not yet like writing to NTFS. But, if you have Mandrake 10 or Fedora Core II, then they should be able to read NTFS, but writing file to NTFS via Linux is still very much a new project.

Taeuler's fstab sugggestions are correct, just try to replace reiserfs with ntfs for the filesystem (if it is NTFS) or vfat (if it is a fat32 partition).

What distro and version of Linux are you using?

[Niels82]

got mandrake 10 ..

running win and the other partition on fat32 now

In windows i can see both fat32 partitions ..
In linux i can see both fat32 partitions but only see the files in the one where windows is installed .... very strange

I even tried to set the fstab the same for those two and still i can see only the files of one if i go inside it and "ls"

[danleff]

[Niels82]

I got it working now at least, line for the partition ended up with:
/dev/hdax /mnt/hdax vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0

No idea what it means

Ill think about going to NTFS again later, I dont store any data that I cant lose so I dont worry right now

Thanks for helping!

[Vermyn]

Incidentally, mplayer (www.mplayer.hq) can play WMA files when paired with the win32 codecs install package.

[Dapper Dan]

Vermyn, was the Mplayer install on Gentoo very difficult? I used it regularly in RH 9 but had a heck of a time installing it on Core 1. I finally got it installed on Core 2, but it still wouldn't work properly. Xine on the other hand, built in seconds with apt-get rpm, using the Freshrpm repositories, and plays my new "Northern Exposure" DVD's lika a champ!