Re: newbie question

boy_at_boywonder.com
Date: 03/14/05 

Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 01:07:59 GMT

Thanks for response but a lot of what you say is still beyond me.

>>I'm running windoze 98SE on drive c: and XP on drive d: My Linux
>>partition (Fedora 3) is on drive 2, in partion 2, where GRUB resides.
>>I'm triple booting with the ntldr with the help of bootpart.
>
>My condolences, but whatever works for you ;-)

I can laugh about it too, but there are methods in my madness. I use
my system primarily for music and my feeling is that Linux can't give
me what I need. I'm on the cutting edge of computer music and Linux
can't run most of the apps I use.

I use Win98 on the first partition mainly to piss Bill Gates off. But
it's also very handy to boot into 98 and manipulate files in XP that
XP itself wont let you access. I run XP mainly in a FAT32 system,
allocating one partition for NTFS in case I have files over 4 gig in
size.

I know there's a revulsion expressed by Linux users toward Micro$oft
products, but they're really not all that bad. And that's coming from
someone who wouldn't want Bill Gates going out with his sister (mine,
not his). XP is pretty solid, and if it's the only system you know, it
will do pretty well whatever you need. I am interested in Linux
because I like tinkering with things, and I've always supported the
open, free system it presents.
>
>>You're saying I should create an empty directory on Drive D: (hda2) to
>>share files with Win XP, and call the directory 'C'?
>
>No, the empty directory goes on the Linux root, such as /mnt/C. It's
>just an empty place to hang your hat... I mean to hand your C (or D
>or whatever) drive. I don't have any windoze partitions, but this system
>does have a CD and floppy drive. So, I have to empty directories:

so Linux can see the Windoze partitions? How does it read the
formatting?

>-t identifies the type of file system. This could be 'msdos' for the ancient
>8.3 type of mess or 'vfat' for the "improved" dos version that allowed
>strange file names. There are a number of other types as well.
>

you know, it's funny in that it's what you are used to. I've heard all
sorts of put downs of DOS and it's 8.3 system, yet I find the Linux
system totally perplexing. One thing the 8.3 taught me was to be
frugal with the use of longfilenames. I hate to see filenames that are
short essays.

I'm getting used to the notion in Linux of everything being a file,
but I don't see the point in it. Windows comes stock with the
extension turned off, and I thought 'what a dumb idea'. It's like
calling everyone by their first name. It's the last name that
identifies you just as it's the extension that identifies the file.
There's a big difference between bob.exe and bob.bat or bob.txt.

In the DOS environment, the directory structure is very important. I'm
used to categorizing everything file-wise with directories and
sub-directories. This may present a problem for me learning Linux, but
I'll get there.

The most recent implementation of X Windows is pretty impressive. I'm
enjoying the Linux (fedora 3) GUI and it will no doubt help me learn
the text version.

>>So, the statement:
>>
>>mount -t vfat /dev/hda2 /mnt/ C
>
>Whoops! Watch the space in front of the ' C'. That would be a legal name
>(if the directory existed and if you quoted the '/mnt/ C' like that) but
>spaces in file names drive computers nuts, because they don't know if you
>are using the space _in_ the name, or to separate arguments as I did
>above with the second 'ls' command. You could also 'escape' the space with
>a backslash (/mnt/\ C) but you can see that gets to be a pain too. The best
>advice is to avoid unnecessary spaces.

yeah...I'm onto that one already, but my experience comes from Windoze
and limited programming experience.

>
>>in my case would mount the sub-directory C in my XP partition for
>>Linux to use.
>
>You're pushing me here, because I don't use windoze at all, but if the
>second partition of the first drive is what XP calls 'C:'

In a DOS-based system (FAT), the C: drive is actually a logical
partition, unless it occupies the entire disk as a primary partition.
If there are other partitions present on the physical drive, C: takes
on a unique requirement in that it has to be the first partition on
the drive and has to hold the boot code , MBR, etc. for at least one
operating system. After C:, things can get a bit hairy.

For example, if a second physical drive is added, it 'should' be named
drive D:. That goes back to times, I guess, when drives were small and
partitions weren't an issue. The drives were named after the sole
partition on them. If you had a drive with one partition called C:,
and a CD reader was added, it would automatically become drive D:
That's because A and B were reserved for floppy drives.

XP doesn't have a lot to do with the naming of partitions, although
many software providers assume windoze will be found at C:\Windows. It
doesn't have a choice into which partition you install it if C: is
already taken. It's only requirement is access to the MBR on partition
c: When I installed XP over Win 98, it pointed out the existing
partition and asked if I wanted to leave it. Then it gave me an option
to install itself elsewhere.

There's a nasty habit in the DOS environement of refereing to
partitions as drives. They actually mean 'logical' drives. So, any
letters assigned, C:, D:, E: etc are normally partitions (logical
drives) If you had an existing system with a C: partition on one
harddrive and D: partition on a second harddrive, then you added a
new logical partition to drive 1, it would be named E: If you now
added a new partition to drive 2, it would be called drive F:

In my case, I started out with one physical drive, and my partitions
are C: (Win 98), D: (Win XP), E: (XP swap), F:, H: I: (that's eye). My
CDROM drive is G:, but i could rename it to Z: or whatever. I also
have two virtual drives called T: and U:.

What I was talking about above was adding a sub-directory called C on
the XP partion D:. In DOS talk that would be:

D:\C\

to make that a little clearer, windows usually goes on the C:
partition in a sub-directory called Windows. It's a sub-directory
because C:\ itself is the main directory and the root. You can store
files in C:\, and some system files are stored there. The windoze
directory is listed as:

C:\Windows and it is the root for any subdirectories under it. One
important sub-directory is system32, and it is noted as:

C:\Windows\Sytem32

Sytem32 has it's own sub-directories too.

I don't find a lot of difference between the DOS-based directory
structure and that of Linux. Th main difference for me is
understanding which type of file is which....and the permission. DOS
files have permissions too such as system, read only or hidden. They
are set by the attrib command.

I feel in a lot of ways that Linux needs to overhaul it's older stuff.
I just had the horrific experience of trying to understand the emacs
editor. I mean, this stuff was written for teletypewriters. It's a lot
easier for me to get a GUI-type edit window in DOS than in Linux.

>then yes, that
>is the case. What you might run into as a problem is that the windoze
>file systems don't know anything about Unix ownership or permissions.
>Linux will "fake" the ownership as being that of the person who mounted
>the partition (normally root) and set file permissions to -rw-r--r--
>so that only root can write to the drive. Root can fix both of those by
>putting appropriate arguments ('uid=100' and 'mode=777') in /etc/fstab
>(where the uid value might be your regular userID, or where the mode
>allows everyone read/write access). This could have security implications
>if you are NOT the only user.
>
thankfully, I am the only user.

Thanks again for info.

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