I have a dual boot system (Opensuse 11.2 and Win 7) and want to use the same folders for document, music, picture and video for both systems. I win 7 it’s possible to redirect those folders to a new possition, for instance a new partition “Media”. KDE have a similar function i About Me > Paths. But if you redirect the Document folder or music folder to a new place they do not appear in your Home-folder in My Computer, Dolphin ect. Is it possible to fix that?
I think you could be looking for trouble to try and change either OS from their normal default folders, however it is possible to change the folders that are used by your applications. For instance, I can change Amarok to use my music folder in Windows. I can change my documents folder in OpenOffice to use my folder in Windows. To use your Window’s folders in Linux, you must mount or add a line to your fstab file to mount the Windows NTFS partition while in Linux. It may be necessary to change the options for mounting the NTFS partition to allow full editing while in Linux. I use the setting “Defaults” for NTFS partitions in Linux which allows full reading and writing. Be aware you can delete Windows files while in Linux that can cause Windows to no longer function, so be careful. Generally, all Windows NTFS partitions present when your installed openSUSE will be added for you to your fstab file, but they will not be using the “Defaults” option as shown below.
Example fstab entry for a Windows NTFS partition to be used in Linux:
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-ST315003_41AS_ST31500341_9VS16YJQ-0:0-part1 /Software ntfs-3g Defaults 0 0
fstab is located in the folder /etc
In KDE, you can edit the fstab file using the Run Command
kdesu kwrite /etc/fstab
When running Windows, you will not by default see any information saved on your Linux partition, but if you point your Linux programs to your Windows folders, that will not matter. Do consider that that some files types created in Linux or Windows may not work when you try to use them with the other OS. For instance, if I want to use the same documents files in Windows and Linux, I might decide to use OpenOffice in both Linux and Windows, to ensure file compatibility.
Thank You,
@jdmcdaniel
You have the option** Default **in that fstab entry. There is no such option. There is the option default.
Please take care: Unix/Linux is case sensitive in most places!
Actually it is “defaults” I think. At least that is what is really in my fstab and it is working. I was trying to shorten the line to fit in the code block and deleted the “d” in defaults, but then made it a capital letter, which was not helpful. I can’t say if using that would work or not, but most likely it would not work.
Thank You,
Please do only a cut and paste of computer text when you post it as computer text. Do not try to be clever and mutilate it. Other people will cut and pasteit to their system and wonder what is wrong. It will fit always because there are rulers in the CODE box when shown. Also do not mix normal text within the CODE block for the same reason.
While I agree with you hcvv, if I had the ability to edit my post a day later, I would just fix the issues instead of needing multiple post to complain about it later. Good intent was present even if good deeds did not materialize. As always, I heed the advice of others.
Thank You,
Thanks for the replies.
I am aware of the problem with differend filetypes in win and linux, but when it comes to documents, music-, picturesfiles it won’t be a big problem i guess (using OpenOffice).
I haven’t try the mounting-command yet - hoped that the sitting in About Me would be a bit simpler. But in your example you mount a folder named /Software directly at the root in your Home-catalog. Is it posible to mount a folder as a second-folder to your existing folders in Home. For instance mounting /Software to Home/Documents/Software?
When you say: " … at the root in your Home-catalog …" do you mean the root directory (/) or a users home directory (/home/<username>). Please try to use the precise wording. Also take care of using capitals. While you can of course hava a /Home/Documents/Software, I assume you in fact mean /home/<username>/Documents/Software, which a complete different thing.
And try to understand the different roles you, probably the owner, system administrator and main user of the system, have. Never forget that Linux is a multi user system. Thus anything belonging to user1 does not needed to belong to user2 (e.g. user1 run KDE with a lot of fine tunng and user2 just uses plan Gnome). And you as system manager (using root) are mainraining the system, not the users data/configuration, etc.
And you can mount on any directory (when it exists of course). Thus when you hava a seperate partition mounted on /home (that is recomended here) you can have another partition (on the same or on another disk, where disk means also disk mimicing things like USB storage devices) mounted at say /home/<username>/Software. The only thing is that /home must be mounted first, else /home/<usernme> would not be there. Thus the sequence of the entries in /etc/fstab is important!
You, having these questions, might be ineterested in reading SDB:Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points - openSUSE and the Wikipedia links it points to.
You are right, what I meant was my user home directory (/home/<username>).
The directories from my windows partitions witch is actually already mounted as /windows/E:
“/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK2555GSX_994ET59UT-part1 /windows/E ntfs-3g defaults,users,locale=da_DK.UTF-8 0 0”
But on my windows - drive E - partition I have several directories, for instance the directory named Documents. Can you give an example how to mount that specifik directory (Documents) to my /home/<username> in fstab? And in that case what happens to the existing directory named Documents in my /home/<username>? I guess I have to remove it first?
You can mount the partition (as is allready done). You can mount that partition on a different place(e.g. replace /windows/E with* /home/Documents/windows-documents*. But you can not mount a directory inside the partition somewhere.
But you could make a symbolic link and it will be as if it is there. Like:
ln -s /windows/E/Documents /home/<username>/Windows-Documents
Do not do this as root (else root has to change the ownership afterwards), but do this as . Then, when you are in your home directory, this could be shortend to:
ln -s /windows/E/Documents Windows-Documents
When you mount this on a directory that exists allready, the allready existing contents will be hidden until you unmount again). You could have found this phenomenon in the link I provided earlier. I have started that SDB page with the goal that I do not have to write everything twice or more >:), so please first try to find your answers there. I have no problems when you ask clarification about what you read there, but I have problems when you do not read it.
And as a last advice, do NOT use non Linux filesystem types as a replacement for Linux native file system types. The interface to Windows file system like NTFS are to make it possible to exchange data with a minimum of problems. Not to put your daily Linux files on it. Windows file systems lack a lot of the features Linux file systems have. The implementation that makes mounting these fiile systems possible has to mimic them or ingore them. You will without doubt run into troubles when you replace part or whole of your home directory (or any important data like databases, web-sites, etc. for that matter) by a non Linux file system.
If you are primarily using the GUI interface you could just navigate to that directory/folder in Nautilus (Gnome) and add it as a bookmark in Places.
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h282/rankamatuer/RankAmatuer%20Video%20Album/bookmark.png