yes, it's possible, i just did it last week!
being a newbie myself i am not sure if i remember how to do it right.
i will try to outline it here though, and i will go home tonight and look at what i did (all changes written down
) and edit this post to say the proper method at some point tomorrow.
the key is to edit your /etc/fstab file. You will need to log in as root, if you are not logged in as root, open up a terminal and type:
su
you will then be prompted to type in your root password, which you should do.
now, to open the /etc/fstab file, type:
pico /etc/fstab
which will open up the fstab file in pico, a text editor.
here's an example of an /etc/fstab file:
/dev/hdb5/ ext2 defaults 1 1
/dev/hdb2/home ext2 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc/mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user 0 0
/dev/hda1/mnt/dos/c msdos defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1/mnt/dos/d msdos defaults 0 0
/dev/fd0/mnt/floppy ext2 noauto,user 0 0
/dev/hdb4none ignore defaults 0 0 none /proc proc defaults
/dev/hdb3none swap sw
i got it from
this site here. Go and look at it, it might answer all yr questions.
anyway the key lines here are:
/dev/hdc/mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,user 0 0
/dev/hda1/mnt/dos/c msdos defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb1/mnt/dos/d msdos defaults 0 0
the first line tells yr system how to mount the cdrom, the second and third tell the system to mount the windows partitions.
This guy has mounted an msdos partition on the 1st partition of his 1st hard drive, and one on the 1st partition of his 2nd hard drive. You can tell by the names "hda1" and "hdb1" that stands for Hard Drive "A" or "B", partition number "1" (where the numbering of partitions starts at 1) got it?
You can now manipulate your own /etc/fstab file to include a line for each fat32 partition you need to include.
Now, the next bit is where it says "defaults". This is the bit where you assign which users have how much permission to view or change the contents of that branch of the file tree (read partition). There are a number of switches you can put in here instead of "defaults" and i
think they can be found by typing:
man mount
in a shell.
Here's what it'll say, so you could click this link instead...Better open a new shell up since you still have pico running in yr first one.
You will probably want to change the "defaults" to some other combination of permissions, i have "user" and a couple of other things in here. This allows any user to read and write to that partition. Obviously this is not okay unless you are certain nobody unscrupulous is going to be logging into your linux system.
Leave those numbers at the end alone too...
Once you have finished editing your fstab file, press "CTRL" and "X" to exit pico, then "Y" to save the changes you just made and "Y" to write the new file to /etc/fstab.
Now, as i said, this is all just from memory of what i did the other day. I will check it out and amend this post accordingly tomorrow. Now that you know you have to edit your fstab file, do a search for "/etc/fstab" on the web and see what you come up with. I don't recommend actually editing yr /etc/fstab file until you are sure of what you are doing.
In the meantime, if somebody wants to spot a glaring error in this post, and post their greivances, please do, again, i will amend the original post accordingly so as not to mislead people trying to follow my twisting instructions!
[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]
