Hints requested for beginner

[Andy Green]

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On Friday 28 November 2003 06:31, Graeme Willox wrote:

> where someone described how to mount the windows drives, but I still
> need to find out how to do things like have this drive mount each time I
> start up

Yes, its not easy getting started.  If you google for linux newbie you can 
find some good resources, that's how I got started.

/etc/rc.local is a kind of end-of-boot script where you can put commands you 
want done as root after each boot.  You can only edit it as root, since you 
don't want normal users being able to wreck up your system.

> how to mount the other partition on my hard drive, and whether

First you need to find out which partition you are wanting and which drive it 
is on.  The partition naming is like /dev/hda1 for example, which is the 
first partition on /dev/hda.  FAT32 is supported by the 'vfat' filesystem in 
Linux.  You need to make an empty directory somewhere as the mount point.  
You have to do all this as root, but once you get sorted out, you'll find 
your need for root powers dies right down.

mkdir /mnt/win

fdisk /dev/hda
p

This will get you something like this:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1        13    104391   83  Linux
/dev/hda2            14      4734  37921432+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3          4735      4864   1044225   82  Linux swap

q

gets you out of fdisk again

Identify which partition is your Windows one (I don't have one, but you 
should) and issue something like this (change the /dev/hda2 to your 
partition):

mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/win -t vfat

Now when you go to look in /mnt/win

ls -l /mnt/win

instead of an empty directory you should see your Windows stuff.  If it 
worked, paste the mount command into /etc/rc.local to get it done every boot.

(Handy tip on pasting from a console, highlight the text with the mouse, click 
on the window where you want to paste, hit the middle mouse button (or left 
and right together on a 2-button mouse) to paste. )

> there's already something like Windows Explorer / Xtree (being an old
> MS-DOS user from way back.  - Am I allowed to say MS-DOS on this list?
> )  :-)

If you installed KDE, Konqueror is a really nice explorer replacement, for 
file management and web browsing.  If Gnome, then Nautilus is the equivalent.  
mc (Midnight Commander) is a console type equivalent if you have it 
installed.

- -Andy
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