I did not have to do anything to SL to be able to access the FAT32 Windows XP partition on my dual boot laptop. All I did was to set up a shortcut (properly called a ‘Desktop Config File’) on my SL Desktop in order to make it easier for me to browse the contents of a folder on the Windows XP partition. For example, to be able to quickly browse the My Documents folder on the Windows XP partition, I set up a Desktop Config File to open the URL:
media:/sda2/Documents and Settings/Fitzcarraldo/My Documents
The FAT32 filesystem does not have any file permissions of its own. By default, for each file and folder in the Windows XP partition SL sets the owner to your SL username and the group to root, and makes them all read/write. However, on one occasion I noticed that some folders in my Windows partition were read-only for some unknown reason. This was easy to fix: I just typed the following into a Terminal windows as root:
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mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/Windows
chmod 777 -R /mnt/Windows
as I had partitioned my HDD so that /dev/sda2 is the partition with the Windows XP C Drive. Actually, when I installed SL it automatically configured the Windows XP C Drive as /media/ACER, so I probably could have typed the following instead:
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chmod 777 -R /media/ACER
The file /mnt/Windows already existed when I installed SL but, if it had not, I could have created it by typing the following into a Terminal window as root:
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mkdir /mnt/Windows
If I had wanted to, I could have chosen another name for the mountpoint instead of “Windowsâ€: “Câ€, for example.
Note that, to change the owner and group, and make everything read/write, and mount the Windows XP C drive automatically when booting SL, I could have added the following last line to the existing /etc/fstab file:
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#<Filesystem> <Mountpoint> <Type> <Option> <dump> <pass>
/dev/sda6 / ext3 defaults,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sda3 /boot ext3 defaults,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/sda5 /home ext3 defaults,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/sda7 swap swap defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda2 /mnt/Windows vfat users,uid=1000,gid=100,umask=0000 0 0
To understand the meaning of the fields in the fstab file, read the following Gentoo Wiki page:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mount_Wind ... 2C_NTFS%29which explains the meaning of umask and tells you how to find your uid and gid.