As the title suggests, I think I've done something wrong with my Linux installation. I had XP installed, and I've just installed SuSE 9.1. 120GB HDD, split into this: 16GB Windows partition (NTFS) 95 GB Media partition (NTFS) 4GB SuSE partition (Reiser) 1GB Linux Swap file (FAT32) Windows was already installed, then I created the partitions and installed SuSE. Two problems really - I can't mount my NTFS drive so it's visible in SuSE, any ideas? I thought SuSE had NTFS support? Secondly and possibly more worryingly - I can no longer boot into XP. When I'm confronted with the SuSE boot screen (I have 7s to decide between XP and SuSE), Linux will load fine, but if I choose XP, my computer just decides to restart. There's other things like audio CDs not working the way I think they should (ie they don't work at all ), but I daresay I can sort that stuff out.
i dont know much about suse so i dont know if it has ntfs support built into the kernel but it might have it as a module modprobe -l to see what modules are there what boot loader is it using? what command are you using to mount the ntfs partition?
I think I'm in over my head a bit here. I've not really got any idea what boatloader I'm using, I haven't installed anything (LILO or GRUB), but SuSE has produced a menu with the options "Linux", Windows or "Failsafe". I assume that's just exactly what GRUB does, so do I need it? SuSE has a folder called GRUB in /boot, so maybe the SuSE loader is based on GRUB? To mount the other partition, I was using mkdir /mnt/c mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/c That seems to work and the disc appears in My Devices, but when you try and access it, it says access denied or something. However, when I type: ls /mnt/c I can get a sensible looking list of folders etc, so it's obviously doing something right. By the way, those commands were just lifted straight from a website, I don't have any idea about Linux commands Isn't the Kernel standard across all distro's? That's what I thought anyways. Someone really needs to make linux more user friendly
well when you are mounting the windows drive you arent specifying the partition type try mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/c both grub and lilo can do the same things but lilo is much less flashy open the file grub configuration file /boot/grub/grub.conf if you dont see that then you need to mount the boot partition in /boot mount /dev/hda# /boot please post what is in the configuration file
Still says can't access drive when I try to click it. OK, it's not got the conf file. But I'm unsure which drive to mount in the /boot. the drive with XP installed on it? Ta for the help
Can you access the drive as root? It might be a permissions error. By the way, Linux+ntfs=bad. You *will* break something eventually. If you have to share data between Win and Lin, use fat32. Sam
Sort of, but not. Basically, the kernel is the same but different Users, Distros, etc have it set up differently. You can compile in different options (for example, support for different architectures) in order to tweak your kernel to exactly the way you need it. Cheers Sam
I don't fancy formatting the HDD with all my files and stuff. I thought FAT32 was limited to 32GB anyway? I can't access the drive as root, no.
No, you can have bigger drives than that (I think). I think that you just cant format drives bigger than that using windows. Linux really doesn't support NTFS- you can read it, but eventually writing to it will cause problems. If you really must do it, make sure and backup! Ok, what is the exact error- and can you please post your /etc/fstab Sam
Code: /dev/hda5 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1 /dev/hda6 swap swap pri=42 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0 /dev/dvd /media/dvd subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0 /dev/dvdrecorder /media/dvdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0 /dev/hda7 /mnt/captive-noname captive-ntfs defaults,noauto 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/captive-noname2 captive-ntfs defaults,noauto 0 0 Hope that makes some sense to you I've got a 95GB partition for media files, which is in NTFS, and I only want to read it. Hmmm, I actually can access the drive as root. Which is odd. How can I change that so my proper account can use it? And is there any way which I can make it Read Only within Linux, so I can't damage it? Thanks
ntfs write support in linux is very experimental and not supported because you can only write to replace a file of the exact same size and name so ntfs write support is probably disabled if there is a user control panel thing you should be able to change it in there what partition is the linux boot partition? it looks like in fstab that there isnt a boot partition, i dont really know anything about reiserfs.
right, firstly I suggest you read the man page for fstab: man fstab This should hopefully give you a better idea of how the fstab works. For modifying it so anyone can mount it, you need to change a line in the fstab. The relevant part of mine is this: /dev/hda1 /mnt/c vfat noatime,user,uid=1000,gid=100 0 0 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/d vfat noatime,user,uid=1000,gid=100 0 0 I *think* (but am not entirely sure) that you want yours to look like this: /dev/hda1 /mnt/c ntfs noatime,user 0 0 Bear in mind that I take no responsibility if you break it! Cheers Sam
possibly your mount version is too old upgrade then run mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1(2) now regarding the boot problem, your boot.ini got fooked (something must have gotten deleted) now to go around you must have the winxp cd (and a suse boot disk) *SUSE BOOT DISK IS NEEDED OR YOU CANNOT GET BACK INTO LINUX boot from the cd, and head in to the administrative console and run fixmbr to repair the Master Boot Record exit and reboot, now you cannot get into linux, but using the boot disk you can after booting the disk check the grub.conf file and see if you got this section (assuming to what you have said you have one disk and winxp is first partition) title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1 if it's like that keep it and quit the editor, if not make the changes, quit and run the grub utility to reinitialize the MBR for grub loading
Sorry, I'll get around to trying this at some point, I've been busy and now I'm very tired, but before I do that... The boot disc: Do you mean floppy disc? Or the bootable CDROM? I've not get a floppy drive, but I have got the SuSE installation disc. Cheers
OK, I managed to get into the recovery console (which was hard enough thanks to the special characters in my admin password - I'll remember that next time I'm making a pass - no funny characters. Anyway. When I try FIXMBR, I get this: Well, this doesnt sound like anything I want to do... But is that a normal message? Anyway, could I use FIXBOOT instead? What does that do? thanks
Please help, I need to get back into Windows fairly urgently. Just to throw another problem into the pot - my internet connection seems to be very sporadic - ie it works for a minute and then doesn't do anything for a minute or so. Then it will spring back into life and do everything. I don't think it's a browser problem, because it's the same for Konqueror, Firefox and Kopete as well.
yes fixmbr will restore the windows bootloader its just freaking out because the boot loader wasnt made by m$
Erm, well I've right royally ****ed it now I used the XP CD to try to let me back into windows. I used FIXMBR. When I restarted I found "Error loading operating system", just after when it checks the CD-ROM to boot from. After a load of arsing around with CHKDSK, FIXMBR and FIXBOOT to no avail, I decided to start over. As a "Last resort" (Well I thought it was), I reluctantly used the XP CD to format C:, and reinstall windows on the partition (C. However, I'm still getting the same "Error loading operating system" message at the same point (This is after setup has copied the files - it then needs to reboot, and it stumbles). I've tried FDISK /MBR, which doesn't work, I've tried loads of combinations of fixboot and fixmbr etc etc. None of these work. Anyway, cheers for the help guys, I'm gonna post this problem in general OS chat, as I need this sorted.
