Sharing between Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP hard drives

[latnolndopr]

I have been trying to find an answer to my question all over the net with no luck. I have just recently installed Ubuntu Linux onto my second hard drive that I wasn't using. I want to be able to share all the files between the two, but Ubuntu can't "see" the windows hd and windows can't "see" the ubuntu hd. What can I do if anything to fix this?

[betamaxman]

There is ntfs 3g to read/write xp partitions from ubuntu as this poster has done on another forum. I have no experience with it however.
http://www.leovilletownsquare.com/fu...php?tid/16406/

There is this driver to read and write to ext3 from xp I have used it and it works flawlessly, only to ext2 or 3 though.
http://www.fs-driver.org/

There is this tutorial I wrote for setting up a shared partition for mozilla profiles or simply files.

http://leovilletownsquare.com/fusion...php?tid/12811/

[latnolndopr]

Thanks for all the help, but still having problems. With a couple of different steps it keeps telling me I don't have the necessary permissions. What does that mean?

[latnolndopr]

I have been trying to install different programs like limewire, java, fuse, ntfs 3g, etc. With no luck, I try to follow the read me files or the steps online but I can't seem to get it. What could I be doing wrong?

[je_fro]

A few things....Limewire is straight up garbage. If you want to p2p, check out giFT or azureus.
If your other OS is on an ntfs partition, do "sudo modprobe ntfs" and the filesystem should be readable.
As for your permissions errors, ubuntu doesn't include a password for the root user by default. You have to prefix all "privileged" commands with "sudo".

[dkeav]

or you can create a root password with sudo passwd

[psych-major]

A few things....Limewire is straight up garbage. If you want to p2p, check out giFT or azureus.
If your other OS is on an ntfs partition, do "sudo modprobe ntfs" and the filesystem should be readable.
As for your permissions errors, ubuntu doesn't include a password for the root user by default. You have to prefix all "privileged" commands with "sudo".

I recently switched from LimeWire to Frostwire, which claims to be an open source clone of LimeWire. So far I am happy with it, and it is available as a debian package for Ubuntu.

I also dual-boot XP and Ubuntu on my 80GB hard drive, and in my case I shrank the C: partition to 30GB, and then created a 30GB FAT32 partition, and the remainder for my Ubuntu installation. Now I can read from the NTFS Windows partition in Ubuntu, and either OS can read/write to the FAT32, which is where all my documents, musci, etc are stored.

[dkeav]

the old fat partition method is rather hackish, while it served a purpose at the time, i think if you have tools like ntfs-3g which is reported to be rather stable, why not just use that

[psych-major]

Because within the next month or two, I hope to have the remaining apps that currently require windows resolved, and then the whole drive will be reiser, if catch you my drift...

[betamaxman]

However an option, the 4 gig fat file size limitation will dismay many users especially in this day of video.
Redo your fat partition as ext3 and use the ext3 driver i posted a link to you will find it a much better way to go. You enable the ext3 partition in te xp control panel with classic view enabled you will see an icon.



You then choose a drive letter for your ext2 or 3 partition.



And viola you have a partition you can read and write to from xp and of course you already can from linux.



Believe me this is a better way to go for a shared partition than fat and i have written to this partition from xp many times and with large files with out any problems.
This is a better method than allowing read write to ntfs from linux, remember all those nasties that are harmless to your nix system are not to your xp partition.

[psych-major]

This is definitely an interesting approach, but I still like mine better, which is to nuke Windows altogether and be 100% MSTD free!

I'll be trying this out though, as I periodically help others set up dual-boot systems to get them to try Linux!

[bwkaz]

This is a better method than allowing read write to ntfs from linux, remember all those nasties that are harmless to your nix system are not to your xp partition.

Um? This would be an argument for letting Linux write to NTFS, not an argument for letting Windows write to ext3.

If you get a bunch of "nasties" on your XP installation, and you don't have it able to see any Linux files at all, it can't screw them up, right? Whereas if you install a kernel-mode ext3 IFS driver, then suddenly all these XP "nasties" can start randomly deleting Linux files -- possibly subject to permissions, I'm not sure how the IFS driver would work. I'm almost positive that if you're an XP local admin, like the vast majority of everyone is (and like you HAVE to be to install an IFS driver in the first place!), then you'll be able to write to all the Linux files.

So why would you want to expose your Linux files to modification without you knowing it like that? Why wouldn't you expose the NTFS to the safer OS instead?

(Besides, installing a kernel-mode driver requires admin permissions. Anyone trying to use a machine that they don't own -- e.g. anything where you work -- probably won't be able to do this. Although for that matter, the ntfs-3g thing, if it's based on FUSE, may also require root access, but that would depend on whether your Linux admin has built FUSE support or not. At least it's an option.)

OTOH, maybe you meant that if you somehow managed to run an XP "nasty" under Linux (though I'd like to see how you'd do that...), it could infect your NTFS partition? That may be possible, if it would run in the first place, but it won't.

[betamaxman]

Perhaps, but just because you need to be admin to install said driver does not mean you need to be admin to use it.
And i do not believe nasties looking for windows system 32 folder or various registery lines to edit will do anything to linux. And runing windows as limited is akin to running linux as non root user.
Also most adware that can effect linux is browser bound. If you are worried about your linux partition simply do not assign it a windows drive letter as it is a shared partition we are talking about any way.
"Quote"
OTOH, maybe you meant that if you somehow managed to run an XP "nasty" under Linux (though I'd like to see how you'd do that...), it could infect your NTFS partition? That may be possible, if it would run in the first place, but it won't.
Yes this argument works both ways.

[XiaoKJ]

The point is that letting XP have control over linux partitions is a risk. and spyware / crackers don't care about the filesystem -- they steal identities just fine...

And, no matter how good windows improves, I won't trust any critical information to it. Esp with an OS known to require defragmentation on a weekly basis...

Don't forget --- each partition addressed by windows automatically get molested with indexing (if you have it on) and with closed source software, you don't really know.

These are just some of the potential risks that can be totally blocked off with implementing the service the other way --- using ntfs-3g instead of ext2ifs.

[betamaxman]

If it has no drive letter, it is not mounted in windows. I guess the long and skinny of it is that we are both correct in that it is probably not a good idea to mount in read/write in linux or windows a partition containing the files of another os. A shared partition is of course a different matter, so my advise is to not mount the xp partition as read/write from linux and the same for the partition containing linux from windows, just the shared partition. Remember the said ext2-3 driver does not auto mount anything a drive letter must be assigned.