New to Linux
(Xandros (Debian) installed yesterday
alongside Win98, no problems.)
This PC has six logical Windows drives.
Drive H shares the IDE2 hard drive with
Linux (on 10 Gb unallotted space).
Win98 shows all 6 drives. Linux shows
only C thru G i.e. does not show drive
H (which Windows can access, read and
write etc.)

How can I instruct Linux File Manager to
see that last drive? (Help files so far found
give Linux syntax for the mount command
and nothing more, and I do not know what
to do with this info.)

This distro has KDM and Gnome and perhaps
other tools. Which best approximates
PowerDesk (which I prefer to Win EXPLORE)?

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Don Phillipson wrote:

> New to Linux

> (Xandros (Debian) installed yesterday alongside Win98, no problems.)
> This PC has six logical Windows drives. Drive H shares the IDE2 hard
> drive with Linux (on 10 Gb unallotted space). Win98 shows all 6 drives.
> Linux shows only C thru G i.e. does not show drive H (which Windows can
> access, read and write etc.)

> How can I instruct Linux File Manager to see that last drive? (Help
> files so far found give Linux syntax for the mount command and nothing
> more, and I do not know what to do with this info.)

This question isn't hard to answer, but it's long to explain. I see that
nobody else has answered yet, so I'll give it a try.

First, stop thinking in terms of C:, D:, E:, and so on. In Linux,
partitions are called /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, and so on.

As root (do "su -"), do "fdisk /dev/hda -l" (that's the letter L, not the
number one), and you'll see the partitions on your first hard disk.

Here's what I get:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 63 506016 6 FAT16
/dev/hda2 64 126 506047+ 16 Hidden FAT16
/dev/hda3 * 127 387 2096482+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda4 388 4657 34298744+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 3378 3440 506016 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda6 388 1259 7004308+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 1260 1625 2939863+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda8 1626 2871 10008463+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 2872 3188 2546271 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda10 3441 4657 9775521 83 Linux

I have two FAT16 (DOS) partitions, three NTFS (Windows NT/2000/XP)
partitions, and three Linux partitions, as well as a swap partition.

Your second drive is either /dev/hdb or /dev/hdc. Do "fdisk /dev/hdb -l"
and "fdisk /dev/hdc -l" and see what works.

So, you want to mount /dev/hdb1 (or /dev/hdc1). Apparently it's a VFAT
(Windows 98) partition, so create a mount point (for example: "mkdir
/mount/this_is_my_mount_point), and then do this: "mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1
[or /dev/hdc1] /mount/this_is_my_mount_point".

Shortcut for the future: add an entry to the file /etc/fstab.

> This distro has KDM and Gnome and perhaps other tools. Which best
> approximates PowerDesk (which I prefer to Win EXPLORE)?

There's nothing really similar to PowerDesk as far as I know, but try mc
from the command line. In Linux, you won't be changing directories all the
time anyway.

Have a look at the "From DOS/Windows to Linux HOWTO",
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO.html

--
Yves Bellefeuille
<yan@storm.ca>