Windows -> Linux

[Homer119]

i was wondering if there was a way to access my windows directory in linux, or a way to move files from my windows partion to my linux partion. i am running win xp and linux RH8.0, i have GRUB bootloader, help me out plz!!!

[kZahradnik]

You will have to mount your Windows partition.
In a shell type
man mount
that'll give you all the details. Or you could try a search in this forum. Questions like that pop up all the time, and I am sure you can find something.

Or refer to your own post here (http://linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69228&highlight=mount+windows) :D

[m_s]

about half way in the man for mounting... it tells you exactly how to do it... just make sure you use the right file system :D

[mhlarsen9237]

This may be jumping the gun a little looking at the posts to this thread, but if your XP system uses the nfts filesystem you'll have to have a kernel that can work with it As I understand it, read-only support is what is recommended. Writing to the partition is experimental and dangerous for your data. Anyways, I too wanted to be able to at least read my windows partion but got VERY frustrated messing with getting a working kernel, that didn't give me problems with other programs. I finally ditched windows all together, but was reading about loadable modules and found that my stock Mandrake 9.0 distro had the ntfs modules compiled as a module. I don't feel like putting windows back on my machine to try it but I would be interested to see if this works. Of course this won't be necessary if your windows partion is fat32, but anyway. Try this as root.

#modprobe ntfs

As I understand it this will load the nfts module for reading a ntfs filesystem and any dependancies it has. I tried it on my Mandrake distro and the module loaded without a hitch. If your distro has the compiled module ready for you this should work. You can see that it loaded properly by running

#lsmod

This will print out all the loaded modules and their dependancies to the right of them. If ntfs is listed there you should be able to mount your ntfs windows partition.

Make a directory for where you want to mount it.

#mkdir /mnt/windows

then mount it.

#mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

dev/hda1 corresponds to the hard drive and partition that windows is on and /mnt/windows is where you're putting it. I don't remember how to find your partion information but you may be able to figure it out but looking at the boot up messages by running

$dmesg > output
$vi output

Maybe this will help, or maybe it will just make life harder.

[reallynicejerk]

don't you still need to use the type parameter for the drive when you mount it?

[mhlarsen9237]

I think it will figure it out on its own.

[reallynicejerk]

oh wow that's cool. I just learned from your post that there was a way to read nfs partitions in linux. I just installed redhat 8.0 and the partition instructions on the install documentation said that linux can't read nfs. Of course that's redhat too.

[Irishman]

I have Mandrake 9.0 together with Win2k on a dual boot machine. No problems reaching either partition from the other one. I use it for reading only, however, did not try writing. Oh, btw, Mandrake 9.0 mounted my NTFS partition right away at install, I did not have to anything with it.

[reallynicejerk]

NICE! well it sounds like mandrake is just better then.

I chose redhat because my webserver is redhat, not like it matters though, linux in non GUI command mode is all pretty much the same command and file system wise, which is why I put linux on my home machine, in order to familiarize myself with commands, file systems, compiling and installing rpms and stuff

otherwise if I chose one now, just from what you told me I'd probably choose mandrake.

[mhlarsen9237]

Redhat, Mandrake, GUI, command line, distro version - It doensn't matter what you've got. Based on what Irishman said Mandrake 9.0 mounts the NTFS partion automatically during install. This is just something the've done for you for the sake of convenience. More than likely because of the widespread use of Win XP whih uses the NTFS. When I was dual booting with Mandrake 8.2 and XP home using the fat32 file system (instead of NTFS) Mandrake would also set the system up to mount the windows partion during install. None of the Redhat distros I've tried did this but that doesn't mean it can't be done. The reason that it mounts it as read only is that the NTFS file system specs are given out by M$ so people have to back engineer it to get it to work. Because of that, writing to that filesystem can be dangerous for your data. Read only support is what is recommended. What you need to read a ntfs file system is a kernel that will support it, either with the module compiled into the kernel or as loadable module. That's what I was talking about with
# modprobe ntfs.
You may need to run
# depmod -a
to create a list of all your module dependancies first. If your stock distro comes with that module compiled and read for use, running that command (modprobe ntfs) should load that module and any of its dependancies. You can then mount the windows partion where you want it.

[rustskull]

You can also mount windows shares safely r/w using smbclient.

Samba is a great tool. You can use it as an NT domain controller, printer server, and mount windows shares, as well as share *nix stuff with windows.

In a mixed environment, I can't imagine what sort of creaky-a** tomfoolery you'd have to go to to make *everything* sorta work without it. Samba just does, if you RTM.

-rust

[mhlarsen9237]

That's true. Samba is a nice tool and is not hard to get working, but, unless I've completely missed the boat when it comes to using Samba, It won't do you any good if your dual booting a machine and trying to get to another partition on the same machine. If he's asking how to access shares on another machine running windows then he should use samba. If he's asking how to access a windows partition on a dual boot machine samba won't get him anywhere.

[reallynicejerk]

yeah plus samba isn't even needed you just need to mount the windows partition. I'm running win2k pro dual booted with redhat 8 and accessing files on the windows fat32 partition is not a problem but the two things that I'm working on right now are figuring out how to get redhat to automatically remount the windows partitions to their folders on startup and to get samba running to access the other computers on my home network.

[javmarcan]

reallynicejerk you can make the win partition to automatically mount at boot time editing the fstab file wich is in /etc


put this line

/dev/hda4 /mnt/win vfat auto, exec, owner 0 0

where 4 is the partition and win the dir that you want to mount

then at boot time when the system update the fstab file it would mount the partition

[reallynicejerk]

oh sweet thanks that's just the info that I was looking for when I first came to this site! I've been looking for that all over the place ;)

I've read enough about mounting that I know what the other stuff means, however, what does the owner 0 0 do? does this make noone own the file? I've had problems before as that I'm only able to use mount as root and then when I mount a HD as root I'm unable to access it as another user.