I have the current setup with my hard drives. I have one HDD with two partitions(one is NTFS, the other is FAT 32). I have another HDD that is NTFS. I know I need to install Linux around the FAT32 partition - Do I put a Linux partition before, or after the FAT 32 partition?
Also, where should the swap partition go?

Thanks for any and all help.

It really doesn't matter where you put the linux partitions.

Safest way IS to first create an unformatted space on your disk and then let the partitioning program on your linux distro do the work while it installs.

The bootloader (Lilo or Grub) should be as early on the disk as possible (try putting it in the MBR, that comes up in the list as hda) or on a floppy.

Some people have reported problems with putting the Bootloader on the MBR but I never experienced problems with it.

When you use a new Linux Distro (Mandrake 10, etc.) be aware of the bug in the partitioning tool! It will seriously screw up your partition table and you won't be able to boot Windows.

Workarounds:
- Enter the BIOS and choose LBA instead of AUTO for the disk you want Linux to create partitions on.
This trick doesn't work for anyway.

- Use an older Linux version to create the partitions and right after they are created: restart and put in the latest linux distro.

For your initial linux install, put the boot loader on a diskette, not the MBR. This assures you will be able, at least, to boot Windows.

After using Linux for 10 years, I always boot from diskette.

Hard disc partition accessibility

I want to make a hard disc partition accessible by a user. I added the user parameter to fstab so now users can mount and unmount the partition, but for some reason they still can't access the mount directory. As root I gave the directory its mounted to full read and write rights, but no good. Under a file manager logged in as a user, I can see that the permissions of the directory are set to full read and write. But as soon as I mount the drive there, I see the permissions change back to forbidden for anything but root.
 

There are some settings you have to change, try going back to the permissions properties of your guest accounts. Then make sure you have uncheck the box that has root requirement, you will also have to give them full read write capabilities, and check there account status you can enter your root password save option, which enables the guest users access to only that drive, but doesnt give your password to them, kind of an autoconfigure entering of password root, it will not allow any other root memorization logins though. Make sure that your extra partition is Linux formatted, any windows partitions/NTFS FAT16 or FAT32 will not work as a share drive. At least that has been my past experiences with it. That is only with login guests, however as root you can write to anything.

You should be able to find more support online goto www.google.com and search for turbo linux and find a specialized support forum for that distro. That is if you havnt figured it out by now. Try using YAST if you have that environment on that. It has wonderfull set up utils, and a fancy interface. Control center as well as many other functions. Depending on your Linux distro you may want to switch to SUSE dual booting as you may find its much easier interface makes work easier.
 

First of all I'm not using turbo linux, second of all I'm not using SUSE, and third of all I'm not using whatever graphical interface you were talking about in the first paragraph!
I'm using gentoo and I'm just wondering what determines what permissions a user has on a mounted device.

What file system type is it? Is the partition FAT? If so use the umask=0 option in your /etc/fstab to allow all users read, write and execute permission.
 

It's a Linux style partition with reiserfs on it.
 

Did you try changing the permissions on the mount point after you mounted the partition or before? You will have to do this as root. The mount point directory will loose its permissions and revert to the permission of the root of the partition that it is mounting. If you want to give full access to the whole drive to every user try something like:
# mount -t reiserfs /dev/hdb1 /mnt/mp3s
# chmod -R 777 /mnt/mp3s
When mounting other file system types that don't support GNU/linux like permissions you can usually add uid=xxx and gid=xxx as options when mounting and it will belong to the owner/group xxx where xxx is the user/group id in /etc/passwd or /etc/group....but saying all that resiser does have correct permissions so I don't think the options are valid.
 

But I don't think I'm getting anywhere.
I goofed, I meant to say it's a windows partition with ntfs, sorry about that. When I go to chmod it tells me that the partition is mounted read only, although fstab does not state that it should be. Does linux not have support for writing to ntfs? And if not, can I make it readable by users? I'll try the uid option next though.
 

You can make it readable for all users with the umask=0 option. Bear in mind that directories need to be executable in order to be entered. You can modify/add a line in /etc/fstab which will be something like:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windoze ntfs umask=0,ro 0 0
The "ro" option sets it to read only. Write support for NTFS under GNU/Linux has always been flakey, reading is fine but writing can cause data loss. In the newer 2.6 kernel NTFS support hhas been rewritten from the ground up (M$ keep on changing NTFS) and it now supports safe writing but only to an exisiting file and providing that you don't change the file size by more than 1Kb...except for the odd occasion not very useful! Many people stick to using FAT partitions for sharing files between windoze and GNU/Linux. An alternative would be to use "captive" which does support safe writing to NTFS. You can get it here: http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

Have a Linux Problem
Linux Forum - Do you have a Linux Question?

Linux Books
Linux Certification, System Administration, Programming, Networking Books

Linux Home: Linux System Administration Hints and Tips