[Techtalk] User mounting of a NTFS partition

[Anne Wainwright]

Small update on xvmount aka Tom's Device Mounter.

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:53:11 +0200
Anne wrote:

|> Hi,
|> 
|> see below
|> 
|> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:31:32 +0900
|> Kathryn wrote:
|> 
|> |> Morning all...
|> |> 
|> |> I'm sure the answer to this is "It's not possible", but I thought I'd ask
|> |> anyway.
|> |> 
|> |> I have a laptop that has multiple partitions.  My file system is as follows:
|> |> 
|> |> sda1 ntfs (for Vista)
|> |> sda2 vfat (for shared data)
|> |> sda3 swap
|> |> sda4
|> |>   sda5 ext3 (for kubuntu which I rarely use)
|> |>   sda6 ext3 (for Fedora my daily OS)
|> |>   sda7 ext3 home
|> |>   sda8 ext3 tmp
|> |> 
|> |> 
|> |> This is what I started with in my /etc/fstab
|> |> 
|> |> [kathryn at Galaxy ~]$ cat /etc/fstab
|> |> LABEL=/1                /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
|> |> LABEL=/tmp1             /tmp                    ext3    defaults        1 2
|> |> LABEL=/home             /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
|> |> tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
|> |> devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
|> |> sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
|> |> proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
|> |> LABEL=SWAP-sda3         swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
|> |> /dev/sda2               /Data                   vfat    rw,noauto,user  0 0
|> |> /dev/sda1               /Vista                  ntfs    rw,noauto,user  0 0
|> |> 
|> 
|> I have mounted my ntfs partition read-only. I think you should be careful that your linux supports writing, mine doesn't. 
|> 
|> My options are set as:
|> 
|> user,ro,noauto,gid=windows,umask=002
|> 
|> I can then mount it when I need. I use xvmount

I updated vmount from 3.6 to 3.7 (not that that is the latest version necessarily). The format of the config file xvmounttab has been simplified and mount parameters are now taken from fstab itself. xvmounttab now only contains the name to appear on the button and the mount point. Thus no need to maintain two files

Not that this small utility does much, but it does indicate successful mounting / unmounting which is more than mount does in a terminal. Retains info so if parked somewhere gives visual confirmation of current mount status of all devices under its control

Anne


|> 
|> Anne
|> 
|> |> 
|> |> 
|> |> [kathryn at Galaxy ~]$ ls -l /
|> |> total 180
|> |> ...
|> |> drwxr-xr-x  25 kathryn kathryn 16384 1970-01-01 09:00 Data
|> |> ...
|> |> drwxr-xr-x   2 kathryn kathryn  4096 2008-06-29 16:48 Vista
|> |> 
|> |> [kathryn at Galaxy ~]$ mount -f -v /Vista
|> |> mount: only root can do that
|> |> 
|> |> 
|> |> So upon reading, I decided to try it ro.  Same outcome.  I tried owner
|> |> rather than user with the same outcome.  The only way I can mount /Vista is
|> |> as root.  And I really don't want to do that.  It's not mission critical.
|> |> There isn't *that* much stuff on that partition I would need to access (just
|> |> logs from some software I test) and I can always reboot into Vista. So how
|> |> can I mount /Vista as myself?
|> |> 
|> |> Any thoughts?
|> |> 
|> |> With thanks,
|> |> 
|> 
|> 


-- 
so much to do, so little time :(