Post Install Issues (mounting Drives, Dependencies Etc.)

I've got a couple issues I'm trying to deal with. As an intro I'm once again trying to get into Linux after a few failed attempts. I've downloaded and installed Suse 10.3 64bit. Anyways, here are a couple of my issues.

I've managed to mount my external drive but only with limited success. I've installed all the ntfs programs (ntfs-3g, fuse, libfuse2 and ntfs-config) and followed the directions. Basically the drive will only mount properly if I logon to root first and then my user account. If I log straight into my user account I have no access to them.

Secondly, I originally had (on my desktop) icons for Floppy, F drive, G drive and I believe H, and I. After I've mounted my external drive it is showing up as Floppy, F, G, Massive, and Photography. The Massive and Photography drives are correct but F is actually the same as Massive and G is actually the same as Photography. So I need to be able to delete the Floppy (I don't have one),F and G icons as they are dupes and don't work.

I've also tried to mount an internal drive with no luck at all. The drive is sdb and has a couple partitions on it (sdb1 and sdb3) but no matter what I try I'm not getting anywhere.

Here is my fstab-ntfs-config

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_7V250F0_V500XFFG_V500XFFG-part5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_7V250F0_V500XFFG_V500XFFG-part6 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_WDC_WD740ADFD-0_WD-WMANS1974888-part1 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.U TF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_7V250F0_V500XFFG_V500XFFG-part1 /windows/D ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.U TF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Maxtor_7V250F0_V500XFFG_V500XFFG-part3 /windows/E vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ieee1394-0001d202e09c0805:000434:0000-part1 /windows/F ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.U TF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ieee1394-0001d202e09c0805:000434:0000-part2 /windows/G ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.U TF-8 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /mnt/massive ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb /mnt/downloads ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

I've tried /dev/sdb1 and that never did anything. Would it be better if I used the uid=1000 style of permissions instead of defaults?

The other issue I am having is CUPS dependency issues. I finally removed it from the updates as I couldn't get it resolved. Any reason why I'm having this problem with a fresh install?

Any help would be appreciated. And yes, you might as well treat me as a complete newbie when it comes to Linux. I have some basic understanding but that's about it.

Thanks

The other issue I am having is CUPS dependency issues. I finally removed it from the updates as I couldn't get it resolved. Any reason why I'm having this problem with a fresh install?[/b]

That seems to be a problem started today in the SUSE updater repos. There are two CUPS updates but only one of them is the real one. The other has a complete different description and can not be installed. May be this will be corrected in a few days.

regarding your external drives, if you do not log in as root (which you should NEVER do if possible) do they appear in sysconfig (clicking on my computer), when logging in straight into your user account? with those ntfs programs all should work, it does with mine. just to check you shouldnt need to add anything in the fstab to get an external drive to mount properly, and at boot. proper configuring will do this for you. now, first you should mount it before changing permissions. to do this open terminal window and log in as root and type

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media

this is assuming the device is sda1, obviously this will be different, and that you are mounting it to /media. once that is done you can check by unplugging it and replugging it, to see if it mounts there. then in a console window type ntfs-config. this will open ntfs-config, choose to have the drive as read/writeable. if you can't write to it in /media (or where ever its going) then you must change the permissions. you can either make yourself the owner, or root. if there are no system files then no harm to have you as the owner, so now you can type, as root

chown username /media/devicename

where username is your user name, and device name is where its mounted to (for instance my portable drive is called MyBook. now you can go to /media/device name and then right click on the folder>permissions tab>change permissions to read write for your user. be sure to check the box saying apply to all sub folders.

does that help? should do...

here, take a read of this for editing permissions, its very, very good. makes it easy for beginners like me to understand