NTFS

I am completely new to Linux. It has taken me 3 months just to figure out how to install a distro on my system that has 4 available drives. Ubuntu would install and then could not be booted into. I tried this distro 2 months ago, but could not get into the installation screen, I guess I had a bad copy. So I finally have SUSE 11 installed, but am stumped almost immediately.

So, to start with, I have done some reading regarding NTFS and being able to read and write to such drives and frankly I don’t understand it. I understand that there is a program called NTFS-3g that is preinstalled, but the changes that are required, require me to log in as a root user? I’m assuming that means to log on as an administrator, but I have no idea how. In Vista or Windows 7, you would right click and go to Log on as Administrator. Here I haven’t a clue. Apparently Linux requires some things to be typed in in a place similiar to a command prompt, but I have no idea what that is called in linux so can’t enter any of this information. So I’m stumped right out of the gate here and all help I find expects I already know this information. Rather poor in that regard. Why would you want to get people to migrate to this and give no basic information about what is apparently basic stuff? That just makes no sense to me, but I’m sure you experienced guys have heard this before.

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Have you seen this already?

http://en.opensuse.org/NTFS

To modify the /etc/fstab file run ‘gedit’ as root. Assuming you are using
Gnome (probably a safe assumption) the following should do the trick.
Press Alt+F2 to get a “run” sort of menu

gnomesu gedit /etc/fstab

for KDE users:

kdesu kate /etc/fstab

Or just run ‘xterm’ from the “run” menu and then use su directly:

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Good luck.

chunnel wrote:
> I am completely new to Linux. It has taken me 3 months just to figure
> out how to install a distro on my system that has 4 available drives.
> Ubuntu would install and then could not be booted into. I tried this
> distro 2 months ago, but could not get into the installation screen, I
> guess I had a bad copy. So I finally have SUSE 11 installed, but am
> stumped almost immediately.
>
> So, to start with, I have done some reading regarding NTFS and being
> able to read and write to such drives and frankly I don’t understand it.
> I understand that there is a program called NTFS-3g that is
> preinstalled, but the changes that are required, require me to log in as
> a root user? I’m assuming that means to log on as an administrator, but
> I have no idea how. In Vista or Windows 7, you would right click and go
> to Log on as Administrator. Here I haven’t a clue. Apparently Linux
> requires some things to be typed in in a place similiar to a command
> prompt, but I have no idea what that is called in linux so can’t enter
> any of this information. So I’m stumped right out of the gate here and
> all help I find expects I already know this information. Rather poor in
> that regard. Why would you want to get people to migrate to this and
> give no basic information about what is apparently basic stuff? That
> just makes no sense to me, but I’m sure you experienced guys have heard
> this before.
>
>
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1.Yes,root user = administrator.
2.You must have created the root(admin) password at the time of install.To login as root, user name is root and password is your admin passwd.
3.To configure NTFS read/write support, click on the application launcher (the “start” button in windows) and type NTFS in the search bar.Choose the NTFS config tool.Enter your root passwd and you get a window to configure NTFS
4.Alternatively you can launch a terminal (command prompt) on your normal login and type ‘su’. Then enter the root passwd when prompted.Then type “ntfs-config” to bring up the same window described earlier…

Welcome to linux

I know Linux can be a little daunting, but there is a lot of basic information out there available. I suggest you read through the various guides that have been posted in the forums.

To start:
Concepts - openSUSE

More basic information can be found from the link’s in oldcpu’s sticky thread posted at the top of this subforum:

NEWBIES - Suse-11.1 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums

Please don’t get discouraged from all of the information. Linux and Windows are two completely different beasts; applying the mentality of using one to the other will result in problems.

Hi,

Ok, let me help you to start:

Linux: First 15 Console Commands Newbies Should Learn
50 Common Linux Console Commands You Should Learn By Heart | ixibo

I add the command man. It is used to get help about a console command. So to solve your problem type:


man mount

and read it. Some background information: Linux doesn’t know anything about drive names like a:, c: or d:. Partitions are shown within the directory tree. So you have to put a file system into a directory what we call to mount the partition. The directory where it is mounted is called mount point. So all you have to do (if the needed module has been loaded) to read/write an NTFS-partition is to mount it.

hth

Bye

Erik

Edit: /etc/fstab

any ntfs drives you want to have complete and easy read/write to, you must edit the details after the part ‘ntfs-3g’ in the config line

eg:
a line might look like this:

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST9160827AS_5RF16D1B-part2 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
Change it to this:

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST9160827AS_5RF16D1B-part2 /windows/C ntfs-3g defaults 0 0