[SOLVED] Sharing a third partition with Win XP

[Yora0]

I just have installed Fedora 17 KDE on my computer, on which there are 3 main partitions.

#1: Windows, 100 GB
#2: Fedora, 100 GB
#3: Personal Files, etc.

Now after the installation, there seem to be 4: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/attach...1&d=1338658118

#1: Windows, 100 GB
#2: 50 GB
#3: 40 GB
#4: Personal Files, etc.

(In System Information it looks a bit more confusing, explaining to me what it means would be helpful: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/attach...1&d=1338658315 )

Now in Windows, I could specify folders on the third partition to be the "My Music", "My Videos", and so on folders.
Can I do the same in Fedora 17 with the "Home" folders?

I used Ubuntu 12 yesterday and there you had to mount any other partitions, but Fedora appears to do that by default, if I am not completely mistaken. Would that be a problem?
I think I am really working here mostly on false assumptions carried over from my windows experience, so if anyone thinks an explaination that starts all the way back at Adam and Eve might be needed for me, don't hesitate.
I've been really mostly flying blindly the last two days and only have a few assumptions about what I am actually doing when following instruction guides.

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by Yora0

#1: Windows, 100 GB
#2: 50 GB
#3: 40 GB
#4: Personal Files, etc.

#2 is the root file-system, where Fedora is installed. #3 is the home file-system, where your personal (Linux) files are kept. They are separate so that upgrades don't touch your personal files, amongst other reasons. 50 GiB is a bit large for root though.

Now in Windows, I could specify folders on the third partition to be the "My Music", "My Videos", and so on folders.
Can I do the same in Fedora 17 with the "Home" folders?

Your home directory needs to be on a Linux-native file-system, but you can point the Desktop, Documents, Pictures etc. folders elsewhere by editing ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs.

[Yora0]

I would like to have my Amorak Playlists refer to files on that other partition. However, I need to mount it after every start. Is there a way to auto-mount it on every start?

[nonamedotc]

You could mount it by specifying mount details in /etc/fstab. Look at the manual page for complete details (man fstab). I have used dual boot systems by utilizing the fstab in the past for the same purpose (playlists - I had vlc playlists and was lazy) - mounted windows partitions in linux.

[Yora0]

This looks like it describes what I have to do.
However, I still don't understand it. In particular step 4: What is "to dd" something? Does it mean "paste"?

Is "/dev/sdb" what is given as Location when I open the Properties of "System Volume Information" for the partition? Does "/media/Daten" seem about right for a Drive named Daten?
Or is that the Mount Point "/mnt/point"?

Filesystem type would be NTSF.

[Gareth Jones]

As it's a Windows partition, the line you want is more like:

UUID=uuid    /mnt/daten    ntfs-3g    defaults    0    0

Replace uuid with the UUID value stated by "blkid /dev/sda4" (assuming that the partition is sda4 of course). Also create the directory /mnt/daten.

Don't use /media for mounts in /etc/fstab. /media is for removable drives which are automatically mounted when you plug them in.

[nonamedotc]

Originally Posted by Yora0

In particular step 4: What is "to dd" something? Does it mean "paste"?

'dd' is a vi command to delete an entire line. If you are going to use gedit, do not bother about dd.

To find out what is the identity of your windows partition you can use

df -h

This will tell you which sdan is the windows partition. Then you can follow Gareth's instructions to edit fstab.

[Yora0]

Ah, now that is helpful. The drive is /dev/sda5.

Filesystem                    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                         50G  4.4G   46G   9% /
devtmpfs                     1001M     0 1001M   0% /dev
tmpfs                        1009M  716K 1008M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                        1009M  1.3M 1008M   1% /run
/dev/mapper/vg_lolth-lv_root   50G  4.4G   46G   9% /
tmpfs                        1009M     0 1009M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                        1009M     0 1009M   0% /media
/dev/sda6                     497M   81M  391M  18% /boot
/dev/mapper/vg_lolth-lv_home   46G  948M   43G   3% /home
/dev/sda5                     732G   83G  650G  12% /media/Daten

But could you tell me what df -h is actually showing me?
Right now it is "magic!"

But if you tell me what df and what -h means, then I learned a bit more how this whole Konsole things actually works.

"blkid /dev/sda5" does not result in any reply from the Konsole.

Where do I create the directory /mnt/daten?

[nonamedotc]

Originally Posted by Yora0

Ah, now that is helpful. The drive is /dev/sda5.

[ ... ]

Excellent!

Originally Posted by Yora0

But could you tell me what df -h is actually showing me?
Right now it is "magic!"


But if you tell me what df and what -h means, then I learned a bit more how this whole Konsole things actually works.

'df' command tells disk usage. '-h' tag in many commands prints the data in a human readable format. gigabytes will be listed as 'G' instead of string of numbers (bytes).

Originally Posted by Yora0

"blkid /dev/sda5" does not result in any reply from the Konsole.

Strange! Alternatively, you can use /dev/sda5 in fstab file instead of UUID.

Originally Posted by Yora0

Where do I create the directory /mnt/daten?

Well, create a folder 'daten' in /mnt directory using mkdir command.

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by Yora0

But could you tell me what df -h is actually showing me?
Right now it is "magic!"

Nothing in Linux is magic. Another useful command to know is "man", which shows manual pages for other commands, e.g. "man df" will tell you all about df.

"blkid /dev/sda5" does not result in any reply from the Konsole.

It's possible that it doesn't have a UUID then. I think older Windows NTFS doesn't use them. As nonamedotc said, you can just use "/dev/sda5" instead of "UUID=..."

The advantage of the UUID is that it uniquely identifies the file-system, even if partition or disk numbers change, whereas the device name is dependent on the order that the drive and partition are.

[Yora0]

Ha!
gedit /etc/fstab got "command not found". I tried "yum install gedit" and it worked! I am learning how this works.

[root@Lolth ~]# gedit
GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend.  Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications.

(gedit:1984): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: Failed to create file '/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.MXZZEW': No such file or directory

(gedit:1984): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory

Is that a problem? Or can I ignore that? I've looked on google, and the replies were all "Don't worry, doesn't matter." So I'll continue for now, just mentioning it here if it might be important later when my computer gets on fire.

Originally Posted by nonamedotc

Well, create a folder 'daten' in /mnt directory using mkdir command.

Oh, it already exist directly in root, I didn't think of that.

Here my new fstab file:

#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Sat Jun  2 18:12:57 2012
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
/dev/mapper/vg_lolth-lv_root /                       ext4    defaults        1 1
UUID=1ee9cdf1-bc41-403e-9c17-cf8c7afd6a11 /boot                   ext4    defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_lolth-lv_home /home                   ext4    defaults        1 2
/dev/mapper/vg_lolth-lv_swap swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/sda5    /mnt/daten    ntfs-3g    defaults    0    0

And since you've all been so helpful, can you explain me in short what the three partitions used by Fedora are for?
There is root, /boot, /home, and swap.

/boot is a 500MB partition that holds all the data needed to start Fedora.
I think root is the same as "/". And that's where the data of Fedora itself is stored.
And swap is for temporary files used by the OS as it is running.
So /home is basically what I want to use the partition "Daten" for. Storing all my personal files.

Everything correct so far?

Once I have auto-mounting that partition running, would it be possible to make it effectivly my new "/home", delete the old /home, and allocate the disk space to "Daten"?
Or is there a good reason not to do that?
Alternatively, would it be possible to access /home from WinXP? I think I'll be using WinXP only in emergencies where I just can't something done with Linux software, but it would be good if I had full access to all my text files, images, videos, and so on. Without having to put everything I think I'll be needing to a WinXP-accessible partition and switch back and forth every time I realized there's another file I'll be needing.

---------- Post added at 01:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------

It worked!

The playlist in Amarok that I had used last and that used files from the mounted drive did not work anymore after automount was in place, even though I always kept working after every restart once I had it mounted.
Now I made a new playlist and this one works after every restart with automount.

Apparently the automounted partition has a different path than a manually mounted one.

However, that still leaves the question if I can make a single "home/Daten" partition that is used by both Fedora and Windows.

[Gareth Jones]

You need to keep the main files on /home in a native Linux file-system, so that execute permissions and special files like pipes and sockets work as expected. As mentioned above, you can change the configuration file ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs to put the Documents, Pictures etc. folders on a different partition, which should be safe.

If you are keeping all your documents etc. on the shared partition, and have the user-dirs config set-up for that, you can move /home and it's remaining contents onto the root partition and remove the /home partition. Then expand the shared partition into the free space. That could be quite complicated to do though, especially as you're using LVM.

[Yora0]

That sounds a lot like what I had in mind.

However, I just found a considerable amount of data in /home/martin/* in hidden files. Mostly Firefox and Wine (Which I havn't used yet), but also .kde, .config, .pulse, and many others, which appear to hold the entire desktop customizations I did in the last two days. That could be a bit tricky.

As of now, there are two Linux partitions, #1 which holds about everything, and #2 which holds /home/lost+found (empty) and /home/martin.
When I look at #1, I have a folder sitting there named "home" and when I open it, I am automatically on #2. However that should actually be a link, not a folder, so I am not entirely sure what's going on there. Or is it just a link with a folder symbol?



Location is "/", but it also has the line "Mounted on /home", which all the other folders on #1 don't have.

Now if Linux goes only by directory structure, then simply moving "home" to #1 would be all that's neccessary. (Using the GUI, logged in as root.)
- create directory "home2"
- move "martin" to "home2"
- delete "home"
- rename "home2" to "home".

But if something keeps track of the partition-ID, nothing will work anymore.
I want the partitions merged and it needs to, I would install Firefox again and start a completely new account and do all the customization. But it would be nice to avoid that.
Would I have to make any changes to paths after such a move, or can I really just copy-paste-delete-rename?

[Gareth Jones]

Originally Posted by Yora0

However, I just found a considerable amount of data in /home/martin/* in hidden files. Mostly Firefox and Wine (Which I havn't used yet), but also .kde, .config, .pulse, and many others, which appear to hold the entire desktop customizations I did in the last two days. That could be a bit tricky.

Those are your personal configuration files etc., and should stay on a Linux file-system. It's okay for /home to be on the same partition as / though, especially if you're keeping you documents, photos etc. elsewhere.

When I look at #1, I have a folder sitting there named "home" and when I open it, I am automatically on #2. However that should actually be a link, not a folder, so I am not entirely sure what's going on there. Or is it just a link with a folder symbol?

Linux has a single "virtual file-system", rather than having separate drive letters for each file-system like Windows does. File-systems are mounted into the virtual file-system. /home is an actual (empty) directory in the root file-system, and the home partition is mounted onto it. If you keep your home directory on the root file-system, then it will still be in the /home directory, but /home will no longer be a mount-point for another file-system. This means that the physical disk layout and the visible file-system layout are largely independent, and repartitioning or adding/removing disks doesn't change where things appear in the VFS.

Now if Linux goes only by directory structure, then simply moving "home" to #1 would be all that's neccessary. (Using the GUI, logged in as root.)
- create directory "home2"
- move "martin" to "home2"
- delete "home"
- rename "home2" to "home".

Close. I assume from your other post that you've already gone for a reinstall, but if you've moved your documents etc. onto the shared partition and set-up .config/user-dirs.dirs, so /home is mostly empty, then as root:

cp -a /home/martin /  # Copy your home directory to the root file-system.
umount /home          # Unmount the old home file-system.  Leaves /home as an empty directory on the root file-system.
mv /martin /home      # Move files back to /home, now stored on the root file-system.

Then edit /etc/fstab to remove the line refering to /home, so that the old /home partition is not mounted on boot, and you can remove the partition.

But if something keeps track of the partition-ID, nothing will work anymore.
I want the partitions merged and it needs to, I would install Firefox again and start a completely new account and do all the customization. But it would be nice to avoid that.
Would I have to make any changes to paths after such a move, or can I really just copy-paste-delete-rename?

No, as above, the VFS means that files can stay in the same apparent place even when you change the underlying partitioning. /etc/fstab associates physical volumes with VFS mount-points, so that is the file you need to change (just remove the /home line) to avoid errors.

[Yora0]

I went the safe route and made a new clean installation in which all the partitions are as I planned.

Filesystem                 Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                      94G  7.0G   86G   8% /
devtmpfs                  1001M     0 1001M   0% /dev
tmpfs                     1009M  1.4M 1008M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                     1009M  2.1M 1007M   1% /run
/dev/mapper/vg_lolth-root   94G  7.0G   86G   8% /
tmpfs                     1009M     0 1009M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                     1009M     0 1009M   0% /media
/dev/sda3                  4.9G  261M  4.4G   6% /boot
/dev/sda5                  732G   83G  650G  12% /mnt/data

> Windows
> /boot
> extended
> /
> swap
> extended
> Data

"Data" is auto-mounted and I used the Path settings in "Account Settings" to make all my media programms treat the folders on "Data" as the standard directories. Works well.

The last thing is to create links to these folders in "home", which I did like this: (See attachment.)
Can I now delete the normal folders? Shouldn't be a problem, right?
And purely cosmetic: Can I make the "Link-Folder" have the standard "Folder" symbol?