Linux Windows mount sharing , both ways,

[The Linuxator]

There is this machine that I have a windows fat partition on it just in case I needed to run some engineering apps for school (PSPICE, WinLogiLab, Visual Studio.net...etc), I don't need to acess it much.
Anyways, the machine is connected to the internet yet I don't allow windows to connect to the internet ( that way avoiding the need to constantly update it, and have security apps for it ...etc) but still I have a lot of files on it so I rather upload them from Linux when I need to when I am web-browsing on the same machine.

Here is my output form # /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77520 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 22350 11264368+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda2 22361 22552 96390 83 Linux
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda3 22552 77520 27704092+ 8e Linux LVM
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.


I accordingly modified /etc/fstab as follows :

# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sys /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows FAT32 ro,defaults,umask=0222 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0


What's wrong here ? I go to /mnt/windows and it's empty so it didn't mount right upon reboot, suggestions ?
The distro is Fedora Core 4.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Wouldn't it be vfat instead of fat32?

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Wouldn't it be vfat instead of fat32?

Well I was trying to enter it as it was identefied, why didn't the /sbin/fdisk -l command return vfat instead ? I'll give it a try though, and report back.

 

[The Linuxator]

OK rebooted it mounts now, thanks for the input SleepWalkerX.
Here is something I never tried, I heared ext filesystems can be acessed through win xp , is that feasible in this situation ?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: The Linuxator
OK rebooted it mounts now, thanks for the input SleepWalkerX.

Cool, glad I could help.

Originally posted by: The Linuxator
Here is something I never tried, I heared ext filesystems can be acessed through win xp , is that feasible in this situation ?

What do you mean in this situation? You can access ext filesystems from within Windows XP.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX

Originally posted by: The Linuxator
OK rebooted it mounts now, thanks for the input SleepWalkerX.

Cool, glad I could help.

Originally posted by: The Linuxator
Here is something I never tried, I heared ext filesystems can be acessed through win xp , is that feasible in this situation ?

What do you mean in this situation? You can access ext filesystems from within Windows XP.

Yes ,I am wondering if anyone tried that yet, I heared there is a driver for ext filesystem for windows to acess ext3 / 2 filesystems.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Haven't tried it myself. There's two drivers that I know of, but I've heard its safer using a standalone client. Personally, I've always liked the ability of windows to detect my other partitions and just surf them through explorer. I dunno, just kinda my personal preference.

 

[The Linuxator]

Hmm I was wondering, why is the /mnt/windows has a read only permession on it ?
I tried chmod +w /mnt/windows

but I got back changing permissions of `windows': Read-only file system
and the permession didn't change, why is that ?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

You want to write to an ntfs partition from linux? The only way I know how to do that is to use captive-ntfs instead of the ntfs driver. Apparently their site even says they're the only ones who offer full read/write support.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
You want to write to an ntfs partition from linux? The only way I know how to do that is to use http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ instead of the ntfs driver. Apparently their site even says they're the only ones who offer full read/write support.

I have made that windows partition as FAT32 for the very purpose of if I ever decide to share it , the process will be very simple, it's not NTFS.

 

[xtknight]

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat rw,defaults,umask=0222 0 0

Your line should read that ^. (rw = read + write, ro = read only). I'm pretty sure FAT32 write support is safe.

chmod cannot override limitations set forth by the line in fstab. After you change fstab just do umount /mnt/windows and then mount /mnt/windows and you're in business.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: The Linuxator

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
You want to write to an ntfs partition from linux? The only way I know how to do that is to use http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/ instead of the ntfs driver. Apparently their site even says they're the only ones who offer full read/write support.

I have made that windows partition as FAT32 for the very purpose of if I ever decide to share it , the process will be very simple, it's not NTFS.

Oops my bad. Well, looks like xtknight might've answered your question.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: xtknight
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat rw,defaults,umask=0222 0 0

Your line should read that ^. (rw = read + write, ro = read only). I'm pretty sure FAT32 write support is safe.

chmod cannot override limitations set forth by the line in fstab. After you change fstab just do umount /mnt/windows and then mount /mnt/windows and you're in business.

And I didn't even check the file, I though chmod can override fstab entries, I guess you learn something new everyday, thanks xtknight.

 

[Nothinman]

And I didn't even check the file, I though chmod can override fstab entries, I guess you learn something new everyday, thanks xtknight.

chmod, chown, chgrp, etc don't work on FAT because FAT doesn't support any permission schemes. The permissions presented to you are virtual, made up by the VFS at mount time.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

And I didn't even check the file, I though chmod can override fstab entries, I guess you learn something new everyday, thanks xtknight.

chmod, chown, chgrp, etc don't work on FAT because FAT doesn't support any permission schemes. The permissions presented to you are virtual, made up by the VFS at mount time.

I see.

 

[Nothinman]

Also, I hope you realize that FAT has a max filesize of 2G, so if any of your apps need large files you'll need to use another filesystem.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Also, I hope you realize that FAT has a max filesize of 2G, so if any of your apps need large files you'll need to use another filesystem.

None of them do even go above 10 MB