USB external HD NTFS SYSTEM

[feitkisa]

I would relly like to be able to use my USB HD without having to format it, How can i do that i?

[scotta3234]

Well... you can install NTSF support from here: http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_cor...ion_notes.html
BUT

NTSF is "Read only" at this time. If you want to read/write you will have to format using fat32 or you can format ext3 and give your windows system ext3 support.

[presdec]

My Problem is that though i can mount the drive without any problem i have more than one external drives. I.e a usb disk, the external 300gb NTFS, my mobile etc..

SO here are my problems.

1.Setting it up as in the guide results in me being able to mount it normally by going into root. But this is only after an error from GNOME which says that i don't have permissions to mount this drive. Even when i give the permissions in fstab it still fails to automount it under gnome. Setting noauto did not work either. (mount /dev/sda1 works when i've set users otherwise i sudo it) So how do i set up the harddrive under GNOME?

2. This links with my next problem having to # HASH out the line in fstab every time i want to plug in only another device because it always tries to mount the first usb entered as a NTFS.

I Am using FC5 on a portable, my fstab command is

/dev/hda1 /home/~USER~/fatboy ntfs noauto,ro,users,gid=500,uid=500 0 0

So how do i set it up? I've tried having a look at

cd /etc/auto.master
more /etc/auto.master
more /etc/auto.misc

but have come up with nothing.

Is it possible to mount a specific drive, ie have it check to see whats in before it does the command?
And how do i set it to automount under GNOME like any normal usb stick?

(Drive is Clean and is kept vigorously so)

Its 300gb of which 230gb have been used up.

Thank you.
Philip Prescott-Decie
University Of Aberdeen, Scotland

[scblakely]

NTFS automount with user access is possible - it just takes some modification of HAL

First - we need a policy added to HAL like this

Created file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/95-ntfs-permissions.fdi:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->
 
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
 
<!-- Mount external ntfs drives with user privileges -->
 <device>
  <match key="block.is_volume" bool="true">
   <match key="volume.fsusage" string="filesystem">
    <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.no_partitions_hint" bool="false">
     <match key="volume.partition.msdos_part_table_type" exists="true">
      <match key="volume.partition.msdos_part_table_type" int="0x07">
       <merge key="volume.mount_option" type="string">umask=0222</merge>
      </match>
     </match>
    </match>
   </match>
  </match>
 </device>
</deviceinfo>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
restart the hal daemon (service haldaemon restart)

This creates a new HAL attribute for your NTFS volumes on plugin containing the appropriate umask.

now edit /usr/share/hal/scripts/hal-system-storage-mount

Just after all the MOUNTOPTIONS processing (after the fi,before the commented echo )
add the following line

fi

MOUNTOPTIONS="$MOUNTOPTIONS,$HAL_PROP_VOLUME_MOUNT_OPTION"

# echo "options = '$MOUNTOPTIONS'"

Test. It works for me.

hal-system-storage-mount is invoked when a new device is detected, after policy processing. You can add additional policies that modify the hal properties set for the device.
hal-system-storage-mount gets some details from hal properties and also tries to read mount info from /etc/fstab based on the device. fstab provides the canonical mount options and mount point, and hal-system-storage-mount does not get any generic mount options from hal properties. This works ok for VFAT but fails for NTFS, and fstab entries may not work well in situations where hotplugging occurs (the first device plugged in is /dev/sda, but may be different from the last /dev/sda). This modification works for all ntfs volumes without fstab changes.

hope this helps

Simon

[scblakely]

Opps - an error in the previous post - ignore the instruction to replace _ with <space> in the .fdi.
The contents of the Code tag are ok as they are.

Sorry

Simon

[gauteh]

Brilliant! Thanks alot! works fine on suse aswell, without modifying the hal-system-mount script(doesn't even exist).

- gaute

[hectorC]

Hello,

This worked for me but now that I switched to the newer ntfs-3g driver I went back to having permission problems when mounting my external USB drive... any suggestion? I can mount as root.

Thanks!


Hector

[gauteh]

This was the same for me, when using the ntfs-3g driver the volume wasn't accessible by users. (opensuse thou)

[hectorC]

I wonder if there is any HAL savvy around who could shed some light on us... or someone who could explain the mounting process.

Hector

[gauteh]

What we want to do is to change the module HAl uses to mount ntfs filesystems from normal ntfs driver to ntfs-3g..i don't know where this is done, is it an udev or hal configuration issue?

[hectorC]

Originally Posted by gauteh

What we want to do is to change the module HAl uses to mount ntfs filesystems from normal ntfs driver to ntfs-3g..i don't know where this is done, is it an udev or hal configuration issue?

Yes, I was looking for that too. I can mount my external USB as root using mount -a and adding an entry in /etc/fstab that looks like this:

/dev/sda1 /media/Samples ntfs-3g auto,users,ro,umask=0222 0 0

That seems to make HAL (or who knows what) to use the ntfs-3g to mount the drive. If I take out this entry then I get an error of unsuported file system when powering on my drive (I don't have any other NTFS module installed). So, using this entry in fstab I can get to mount and access but I can't mount as user (or automount by Gnome) as I get the "You are not privileged to mount the volume" error. On the other hand, If I leave the entry in fstab then I get an error at boot about not finding the device (as it is an external drive and I don't have it powered on all the time) so it seems to be not the right way of doing it. I guess the best would be to let HAL or whoever and Gnome automount normally (without using fstab) but using the ntfs-3g driver and setting the proper permissions... I'll keep looking for this. Let me know if you find something.


Hector

[gauteh]

I did find something on the german suse forum.. but i cannot load the page anymore(i am in fact using opensuse) http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/in...howtopic=43190 (bugger)

I think what we have to do is to add more specific rules to: /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-storage-policy.fdi or create a seperate file in this directory about 'ntfs' volumes saying use ntfs-3g to mount this. I don't know how to write these rules.. but im pretty sure it was something on the german page..