opening files in /dev

[David Gomez]

On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 08:16 -0500, Bill Costlow wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Just switched to Core 4 from Mepis (a debian flavor) and everything
> (so far) works ok except one thing:
> 
> /dev/hda1 is a fat32 (XP) partition
> /dev/hda2 is my swap
> /dev/hda3 is ext3 
> 
> opening up /dev/hda1 or /dev/dvd (using konqueror) gives me a dialog
> box asking what to associate that file with...associating the file
> with konqueror opens another konqueror session and gives me another
> associations dialog box.
> 

The swap partition is not supposed to be accessed like that (i.e. be
browsed)
You don't access partitions firectly, to access your XP partition you
first need to mount it. It is probable that you have your system already
configured, but to be sure on a terminal type the following command

mount

and see if your XP partition appears there. If it does, then you can
access your partition simply by accessing the directory where it is
mounted, for example

dabicho at mokona ~ $ mount
...
/dev/hda1 on /Windows type vfat (rw,umask=0002,gid=100)

...
I access my windows partition simply by browsing to /Windows

if it does not, one way to configure it is appending a line like this to
the file /etc/fstab with a simple text editor

/dev/hda1               /Windows        vfat
defaults,umask=0002,gid=100     0 0

(it is only one line, with fields separated by tabs or white spaces.)
That line just tells the system that /dev/hda1 should be mounted
to /Windows and its a vfat or fat32 partition and that it is automounted
at boot time and some other access options, you can ignore the
',gid=100' part.)

next time you boot your system, it will automatically be mounted, but
this time you just need to type this command in a termina, after
saving /etc/fstab AND creating the /Windows directory

you create the /Windows directory either with the command
mkdir /Windows
from a terminal, or with your file browser, and

mount /Windows

to have the partition mounted, after which you can access it like any
other directory.


I am not aware of a gui utility to do the same job, but maybe there is
one.

Hope that helps.