I See Windows FS

Ok, sure...it sounded better in my head; a pun on "I see dead people". But once down, I have to admit, it is pretty lame. Too bad! Besides, if you are a reader of this blog you're already aware that I'm humor-impaired.

Being a long-time Linux user I've encountered the daunting decision during an installation....should I make the Windows partition visible from Linux? Most of the time, the answer to this question is a 'hard' _no_. My current computer has Debian installed, and the question was again presented during the installation and I chose, once again, no. Unfortunately, I've recently found a desire to make the partition available for file transfers and manually updated my system to make the partition available. I decided to document the steps of this effort, just for fun.

- Step 1 -- determine the file system identifier for the Windows partition

$ cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
.
.
.
# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
.
.
.


Note: a more appropriate means to get the same information would be:

# /sbin/fdisk -l


- Step 2 -- update your fstab


$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdb5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom2 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/winXp/ ntfs uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0022 0 0


- Step 3 -- create the mount point

# mkdir /mnt/winXp


- Step 4 -- mount the file system

# mount /mnt/winXp


- Step 5 -- pat yourself on the back
(pat, pat)