[moozer]

Hi

Newly installed Ubuntu today and thought everything working okay, however I've gone into the OS and found that I can't access any of my hard drives. It tells me that none are mounted and can't be mounted. I don't quite know what I've done here, but this is clearly not right.

Please help - I want to get going with this fantastic OS.

[fenderfreek]

Give me the type and confiuration of the drives that aren't working. Is it all of your hard drives, your Linux drive/partition, or just non-Linux ones?

[saikee]

At the hardware level if the hard drives are accessible by Linux then they will show up in terminal command by

fdisk -l

Thereafter it is a matter of mouting them. The hard drives or their partition can only be mounted if there are filing systems inside. Unformatted partitions cannot be mounted for obvious reason.

Ubuntu is a Debian and it doesn't allow the root login to the GUI in the standard package. Thus one must get root privileage first (by terminal command "su" followed by the root password) to carry out the mounting operation.

[moozer]

Here's the low-down:

I'm multi-booting, using Windows ME, XP Home, and Ubuntu 6.06

I've formatted a 20Gig drive for use with Ubuntu and installed it. It has a swap file of about 850MB.

When I'm in Ubuntu and go to my computer (or whatever it's called!!) it comes up with all my drives EXCEPT the ubuntu drive - I just have File System available (is this the drive in question?)

When I've tried accessing the ME and XP drives (Seperate drives here) it gives me:

error: device /dev/hdb3 is not removable
error: could not execute pmount

It's confusing the hell out of me. I really want to make this work, but I'm becoming despondent with it all.

I'm completely new to Linux and all its parts and having got a clue about coding and such like. I could really do with a "Dummy's guide" to get me going.

[CouchMaster]

Go to Wiki Linux and search for mount/unmount hard drives - it will tell you how...

[moozer]

Result below:

Disk /dev/hda: 3243 MB, 3243663360 bytes
15 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6704 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 945 * 512 = 483840 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 6704 3167608+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77545 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 12006 6050992+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdb3 12009 77544 33030144 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/hdd: 20.0 GB, 20000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2431 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 * 1 2328 18699628+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd2 2329 2431 827347+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdd5 2329 2431 827316 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[fenderfreek]

I don't understand what you mean when you say you can't see the Ubuntu drive, but you say that you can see the Filesystem. If you can boot Linux and browse the filesystem, then your drive is mounted. If your drive didn't mount, boot would hang and you would have nothing.

You're not going to see a "C" drive like in Windows. Everything is mounted on the root filesystem and multiple volumes are all integrated into the filesystem. If you don't have any problem booting or accessing files on your linux partition, then I think you may just be that you're expecting something like Windows' filesystem, when it's worlds away in reality.

If you want to access your windows drives, those can be mounted manually, or you can place an entry in your /etc/fstab to mount it at boot time. Those too will become part of the file tree, not a separate "Drive" persay.

[moozer]

Oh...erm...okay!! I suppose I have been expecting something similar to Windows. My bad!!!

I could do with accessing one of the windows drives so that I can quickly download stuff and transfer onto Ubntu OS (such things as device drivers for modem, etc as I can't get onto internet at present)

I'd like to use the 40Gig hard drive for this purpose. Could you give me instruction on mounting this for use in ubuntu?

Sorry for the confusion - nearly 20 years of Windows/Microsoft has clearly had an effect!! I'm simply not used to all the new Linux stuff. Thanks for your patience though. ;-)

[saikee]

It is pretty straight forward in your case as you have hda1, hdb1 and hdb3, possibly known as "C", "D" and "E" in Windows. As they are Fat32 partitions that means you can read and write them in Linux.

To mount them manually just click terminal and type "su" then follow by the root password when requested. Thereafter the commands are

mkdir /mnt/c_drive
mkdir /mnt/d_drive
mkdir /mnt/e_drive
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/c_drive
mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/d_drive
mount /dev/hdb3 /mnt/e_drive

When you click the desktop again you should find them in the file manager icon.

Older versions of Linux may demand the filing system parameter but most modern ones will know how to mount a Fat partition without being told.

To mount the partitions in every boot up you need to edit /etc/fstab, which instructs the kernel the partitions it must mount, to include them.

[moozer]

Fantastic! Thankyou very much. I'll give that a try and let you know how I get on.
If I opt to auto mount the drives by editing the /etc/fstab, do I simply put the above code into that file?

[fenderfreek]

No, the fstab requires some special parameters and formatting. I'm at work at the moment, so once I get home, I'll copy my fstab entry for a Windows drive in here so that you can use it. I have an NTFS mount, so it takes a little more coaxing to get it working just right. For a FAT partition like yours, though, it will be easier. In the meantime, try Googling for "mount FAT partition in Linux". There's some helpful links there.