Reading Windows Files With RH8.0

[Feanor]

Hi

I'm very new to Linux - just a day and a half old so please be gentle with me if i've posted this question in the wrong place or my questions seem stupid.

I have a dual boot windows/redhat8.0 machine and need to configure my modem and graphics card for use with linux. I believe i've found the required files - Graphics from NVidia and usb modem drivers from smartdrive(?). Some are 'rpms' (?) but most are tar.gz files.

I need to be able to read/copy these from windows to Linux in order to use them. What is the best/quickest way to achieve this? Is is possible to burn a cd with these files within windows 98/2k and read/copy them with redhat8.0?

I have searched the board but have not found anything that seems to explain this to me in simple enough terms for a complete beginner such as myself.

Thanks in advance for your time, consideration and help. :)

[mrpurple]

For the time being, yes, a CD burned within whatever version of Win will be seen once back in RH8. If that is your quickest solution to get your drivers working, do it.

However, you can absolutely MOUNT your windows drive. Be patient with me as I am pretty new too, but I have done this successfully on two computers so far.

These directions, by the way, are not typical for Linux, they are specific for Red hat 8. You'll find that more experienced people will correct me if I am wrong. Log in as "ROOT" to do this stuff.

from the GNOME menu, point to system tools, then hardware browser. Click on Hard Drives. A list of all drives will come up. Note the name of your win drive. It should be labeled FAT and be the size of your "C" drive. (The name might be something like HDA1 or HDA2 etc.)

Next, open a folder called /mnt and create a new folder (it can be named anything you like, but i've been using 'winhd')

Next, find a file in the folder called /ETC named FSTAB. Right click it and choose open with (pick an editor, gedit will do). Now at the bottom add the line:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/winhd vfat defaults 0 0

Change this depending on the 'name' of your win hard drive and change /winhd to whatever you called your folder if you named it other than winhd.

Save that file.

You can now use the tool called "disk management" also in the system tools menu of the GNOME menu. Select your hard drive and click on MOUNT.

Your drive should appear on the desktop and you can copy your files over. If it is not on the desktop, it can also be found in the folder /mnt/winhd.

hope that helps.

[Feanor]

Thanks, mrpurple, for your excellent walk-through instructions - that's just great. :)

I also found this (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/getting-started-guide/s1-q-and-a-windows.html) in the red-hat8.0 'Getting Started' guide - but i'll try your technique first since it has worked for you.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer this and for providing such a detailed response. :)

[KarrottoP]

Granted, I being a newbie too, could just as easily be full of it than correct, but I have found that mounting my windows formated disks that are vfat can be done just with a simple

mkdir /mnt/hdb1
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1

without specifing the file system

[Feanor]

I decided not to edit the etc/fstab just yet as I want to mount the windows partition manually to get used to using terminal/command line stuff. So I just use mcopy within a terminal as required just now which seems to work ok, even if it is a bit of a drudge.

Thanks for the information, guys - your help/advice is greatly appreciated. :D

[sclebo05]

what should the line look like using 'defaults' if you want write access?