OK, where's the computer geeks around here?

Intel 64-bit machine
OS = Redhat Linux 64
External USB hard drive with NTFS filesystem

User (me) = Linux NOOB.

plug-n-play:
message: "The volume 'myname' uses the ntfs file system which is not supported by your system."

so I issue the command
mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/extdrv1
message: "Only root can do that"

Doh... log in as root & try again...
message: "unknown filesystem type 'ntfs' "

The man page for the mount command indicates that ntfs IS currently supported. Am I missing something?

Logical Volume Mgmt indicates the volume exists but it's not 'initialized'. I'mguessing that corresponds to 'formatting' in the windows world? The ext hdd has information on it when plugged into a WinXP system. And obviously Linux knows it's plugged in because it shows a non-initialized volume of the right size.

Is there some kind of extension I can get to allow me to mount the ntfs volume?

 

many times the driver for ntfs is linux is under a different name.
you could try a couple of things.
first try changing "-t ntfs" to "-t ntfs-3g"

ntfs-3g is a very common ntfs linux driver, most come standard with that instead of the ntfs libraries, as the ntfs-3g allows write capabilities, plain ol' ntfs does not

also, try mounting without the -t command altogether.

if it still complains theres no such thing as ntfs-3g, become root and issue the command "yum -y install ntfs-3g"

then try the ntfs-3g thing again^


btw, I use fedora full time. Linux ftw.

EDIT: btw, the man page is just a listing of various different filesystem types and their options, its the same for every user, just because its listed there doesn't mean its installed.
Some of those man pages havnt been updated since the 80s, (cough "ls" cough) although, the program hasnt really changed so i guess there isnt a point to updating it.

 

Didn't work. Here's what happened.

# yum -y install ntfs-3g

Loading "rhnplugin" plugin
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
rhel-x86_64-client-workst 100% |========etc...
rhel-x86_64-client-5 100% |========etc...
reading repository metadata in from local files
Parsing package install arguments
No Match for argument: ntfs-3g
Nothing to do

******
I tried various combinations of case (NTFS-3G, etc) with the same result. Should I point the yum updater somewhere else?
I DO appreciate your help.

 

from the looks of it ntfs-3g isnt in whatever yum repositories your using.
http://marush.com/2007/09/10/ntfs-3g-1910rc-1/ click on the first listed rpm and install that via rpm, then restart the kernel and try mount -t ntfs-3g

 

Got it.
ntfs-3g-1.910.RC-1.EL4.i686.rpm

What does it mean to install via rpm? (I'm a real noob when it comes to linux.)

 

http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic32377.html

Linux is nice FreeBSD is better... *L*

 

use the "rpm" command in terminal to install the software i sent you^
i belive the command in red hat would be "rpm -ivh InsertFilenameHere.rpm"
that should install ntfs-3g
then try mounting again.

@nasty: ive tried FreeBSD a couple of times, not a huge fan. Not user-friendly enough. I like stuff thats easy to work when you want it to, but if you want to do more advanced things its all for it. If I was interested in running a full-time websever I would use BSD, but I use my computer for normal computing as well as a server, so a more user friendly OS with a highly-configurable framework is where its at.

 

This is getting interesting...
There's an option 'open with software installer'.

Says I need FUSE.
Got FUSE download.
Can't install FUSE- says I need GCC (compiler).
Getting GCC now.

Would the rpm command have avoided this?

 

gcc would only be used if you were installing from source. lol yes the rpm command would avoid all of that. Did you try all of that page nasty sent you^? you were only supposed to use a small part of it.
just type "rpm -ivh PathToRpmFile.rpm"
and then it should work fine.

 

Still says I need fuse. Which is funny, since I read that it's incorporated into linux with kernel 2.6.14 & I have 2.6.18.