So recently I've been playing around with Ubuntu 7.10, a Linux distro (and what I'm referring to when I say "Linux" for the matter of this blog) which comes with native support for read and writing to NTFS partitions. That is, a Windows partition, essentially.
Now on install it uses more RAM than XP does, but once installed, which isn't a very long process, it runs smoothly on my machine, which is a mish-mash of stuff I've scored for free, so I was, am, well impressed.
It does however need a few things doing to it before it's all plain sailing though.
1) The NTFS partitions you "mount", disappear on re-boot. This is fixable
(see below.)2) Media Codec's. This is fixable
(see below.)3) iPod functionality? I've not put my iPod into my machine while running Linux yet, but I shall shortly, and I'll report on what I needed to do, if anything, to get it to work. I have already downloaded (d/l) some programs for when I do eventually get round to remembering my iPod...
4) iTunes purchases that'll work outside of iTunes, as Apple won't release a Linux friendly version.
(More below)
(1) Now I had been trying to sort this out over the past few days, so it might be quite this easy, as the /media/ directories were already there, and I just used them
, but as they were the default /hda1 names, I assume Linux puts them there automatically? If not some research on how to create media directories is needed. I did a quick google search before writing this, to see if it was possible or if I was being silly, but it turned up no results. It was a quick search bare in mind. I was being a Muppet, after right clicking the folders in the "/Media/" area, I noticed only "Root" could create and delete things, so I just used a "sudo mkdir /media/test" command to create the desired folder, in this case it was called "test".
Right, so the tools you'll need:
A bit of preparation work is needed first.
It's handy if your drives have all got volume labels, something you can easily do in Windows, by right clicking a drive (aka a partition) and selecting "Properties" and then filling in the name.
Now boot into Linux, and we need to find your media section. Click on "Places" on the top bar, now click "Computer". There you get a summary of all the different partitions on your computer. At the top should either be a text box with "computer:///" in it, or a button that says "Computer". If it's the later, press the icon (pen & paper) to the left of it, so it shows the above. Now, select that and delete it, and type in "/Media/"
You'll see some folders, you should have "cdrom" and "floppy".
Now to create the folders your drives will be using to mount to.
Now you'll need to create the folders you'll want the partitions (or hard drives) to "mount" to. I'd just use easy to remember names, like the volume labels.
For examples sake, we've got 4 partitions that need mounting each time you boot, and you want to read and write to all of them. And we don't know what file systems are in use.
In Windows, they are C: "Windows", D: "Music", E: "Photos", and F: "Misc". The "word" is the volume label.
So now in the terminal, we're going to create the following folders in the /media/ directory, to reflect the volume label, to keep things simple.
So, we open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type in the following different lines, each on they're own, not all together. I'm not sure if Linux can deal with batch commands, so we'll do it the way we're sure of...
sudo mkdir /media/windows
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sudo mkdir /media/music
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sudo mkdir /media/photos
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sudo mkdir /media/misc
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Now on the first go, you'll be prompted for an admin password (your login password), and it will remember it for that session, so just enter it, and then carry on.
Quickly explaining the syntax, or what you just typed in (or if you're really clever copied (Ctrl+C) and pasted (Shift + Insert)), the "sudo" means "Super User DO", or if you like, the System Admin says it's ok to do the following, which is why it prompts for a password. The next bit, mkdir, is simply telling Linux to MaKe a DIRectory, or a folder, at the location ("/media/misc") you specify.
Right so now we have the folders for the mount points, now we need to know a bit more about the machine setup, and we'll be altering a file.
Now we'll need another terminal open, so that's two at the same time if you've already closed that one we just used. In the second terminal we're going to have a look at the partition layout, to find out what Linux is calling your drives. Also, we'll use the other one to show what volume labels tie to what Linux is calling them.
So in one of the terminals, type in:
(that's a lowercase "L" btw)
This will now have a list of your partitions. Looking something like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1ea41ea3
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3296 26475088+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 3297 4793 12024652+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4794 4865 578340 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 4794 4865 578308+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/hdb: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0917942c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 2551 3825 10241437+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb3 3826 4997 9414090 7 HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/hdd: 8455 MB, 8455200768 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1027 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x167e79e1
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 1 1027 8249346 7 HPFS/NTFS
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Now this tells us what Linux is calling all the partitions. You see, the above is a snapshot of my machine, and it tells you I've got 3 hard drives, the sizes of them all, the number of heads, sectors, etc etc, and then it lists the partitions on each one below it, under the "Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System" line.
So you see I have 5 NTFS partitions, 1 Linux partition, 1 Extended partition and a Swap partition. For our earlier example, the screen would look more like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1ea41ea3
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3296 26475088+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 3297 4793 12024652+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4794 4865 578340 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 4794 4865 578308+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/hdb: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0917942c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 2551 3825 10241437+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb3 3826 4997 9414090 7 FAT3
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Now in the other terminal window we need to type:
ls /dev/disk/by-label -lah
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Again, lowercase "L"'s, just copy (CTRL + C) and paste (Shift + Insert)
Which now lists the devices, with the volume labels highlighted. Example below:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 140 2007-12-27 21:12 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 120 2007-12-27 21:11 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2007-12-27 21:12 Photos -> ../../hdb2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2007-12-27 21:12 Music -> ../../hdb1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2007-12-27 21:12 Misc -> ../../hdb3
llrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2007-12-27 21:12 Windows -> ../../hda1
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Now we can match the four volumes with the info we'll be needing shortly to edit the file Linux uses to mount drives on boot with.
So with those two screens we can work out that:
Windows = an NTFS partition = /dev/hda1
Music = an NTFS partition = /dev/hdb1
Photos = an NTFS partition = /dev/hdb2
Misc = a FAT32 partition = /dev/hdb3
So now armed with that info we're ready to start configuring files like pros. So back in a terminal window (it doesn't matter which), we type:
Which will open the file "fstab" in the "etc" folder with the application Gedit (a text editor like Notebook in Windows).
Now it is very important not to mess with any settings here, and you might want to save this current version as a back up, through the "Save as" function under the "File" menu. That'd be clever, just in case.
So, we've backed up, and re-opened the file through the terminal with:
Now we need to add our four drives to the mount on boot order.
To do that we enter the following four lines:
/dev/hda1 /media/windows ntfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /media/music ntfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb2 /media/photos ntfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb3 /media/misc vfat defaults 0 0
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Now it's important to get the spacings correct, so they line up with the information already there. To do that in the file, just press tab, and it lines the next column up automatically, so you might need to retype the above. For more info on Fstab click
here.
Now click save.
Now, back in the terminal window, type in:
This refreshes the fstab file with Linux, and now your four "Drives" should appear on your desktop, just move them where you'd like them and your sorted. Now close all your open windows and carry on.
(2) The prompt to download appropriate codecs comes up when you open files needing them. Just follow the on screen instructions and you're soon away watching your files.
(4)There are two ways, I believe, of doing this. One is to use a Linux program, called Wine, that simulates a Windows environment, and then an early iTunes version can run on top of that.
To be honest though, that just sounds like it's going to munch the small amount of RAM I've got, so this
second method is the one I'll be trying, when I can be bothered to re-enter Windows at home.
The second method compromises of a program that copies the unencrypted data on its travels to the sound card, and re-encodes it into an MP4, I believe. There is a program for d/l here and once I test it I'll let you know what I think.Or not, cus that's naughty...apparently.
Sources:
Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibon" WikiWine ReviewQTFairUse Wiki (Hymn Project)Hymn ProjectLinux commandsMkdir command listingUnbuntu Forums. There is a script about, but it didn't seem to work for me. With hindsight, I could've just edited the fstab file...Ubuntu page, where said script is located.The first suggestion in this thread led me to editing Fstab to achieve this outcome, along with the Fstab wikiBetter understanding of Fstab here...
I realise I went into quite simplistic mode, but I feel this is what the Linux community needs if it's ever to grow to a credible size and stature in the modern world.
The truth is, it's a better O/S than either of the two main ones people know, Windows and Mac, but with a bigger audience it has the potential to be even better, seeing as how openly customisable it is. It could be as much as you want, or as little as you want, and the easier we make things for the "average person" the further ahead the community will leap.
Anyway, I feel I've accomplished something!! woot!!2
Sid
