Making common partition in WinXP and FC2

[sakthi]

My laptop has dual boot WinXP and FC2. I want a partition that is D: (under WinXP) to be a partition taht is accessible to FC2 also. But the problem was I formatted that as a NTFS one and so Linux did not recognize that. So after installation I tried formatting that partition in WinXP as a VFAT. How can I make this aprtition accessible in Linux also. Can you guys help me out? Can I do it without reinstallation and all??

Your help is sincerely appreciated
sakthi

[Paloseco]

recompile the kernel with ntfs read support (and write too if you want but i wouldn´t do that isn´t 100% secure for now)

[crackers]

VFAT (aka FAT32) should be mountable by Linux. That is the preferred way if you need to share files between the two. If you just want to read the NTFS (WinXP) portions, then you can either do as Paloseco suggests and build the NTFS drivers yourself or use an RPM from http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net for read-only operations. The third option is to compile the NTFS drivers for read/write, but that's is (again as Paloseco says) high-risk.

[sakthi]

I formatted the D: in VFAT and tried mounting in linux. But the message says error in mounting there si no such partition. I did in /etc/fstab. Can you tell me how to make it mount in linux. As I want it to be R/W I would prefer it to be VFAT as u said it is very risly to ahve writing option in NTFS.

Thank you in advance
sakthi

[crackers]

What did you put in /etc/fstab to mount it? What does your partition table look like?

[sakthi]

My parition looks like this

1) primary partition for dell - 2MB - hda1 - vfat
2) primary partition C: - 10GB - hda2 (winXP) - NTFS
3) primary partition / - 300MB - hda3 (FC2) - ext3
4) Extended

/swap - 600MB - FC2

/D: - 5GB - NTFS (now formatted with VFAT)

/home - 5GB - ext3 (FC2)

/usr - 7GB - ext3 (FC2)

Now I want the /D: partition to be accessible from linux also.

[crackers]

I don't think /D: is a valid partition label in Linux (that ":" on the end). In your fstab, try using /dev/hdax (where x is the partition number) instead of the label and see if that allows you to mount it.

[sakthi]

Actually I forgot what label I gave for that partition. Is there any possibility of findingout the label name. If there si no label name, how to mount it in the linux /etc/fstab file?

[crackers]

You use the device/partition to mount it. This is an example for your root partition:

/dev/hda3   /    ext3 defaults   1 1

[sakthi]

OK i can put /dev/hda6 (mine is the sixth partition) in place of the partition what should I put in place of the label or the name it was mounted on when we partitioned. May be I did not mount in any name when i partitioned. What shall I do now?

[crackers]

Create a mount directory (/mnt/windows) and mount it there.

[sakthi]

Thanks. I got it!!