Linux Newbie Getting Close But Not Quite There

Hello Everyone,

I know you have heard this a million times but here it goes again.

I have a laptop running XP that crashed. Trying to get the data off using Knoppix. I am able to boot into Knoppix fine. The drive is running NTFS so I have to mount the hard drive from the shell using the following command:
mount -t auto /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

It appears to mount fine. I am able to cd into /mnt/hda1 and run a ls command and see the entire file system. So the drive appears to be mounted fine.

However, when I leave the shell program and try to access hda1 from the desktop I get the following message:
Could not enter directory /mnt/hda1

So it looks like the drive is mounted fine but I can not access it from the GUI. I have searched all over the forums and it looks like this could be a simple permissions issue in that when I am in the shell command I am running as su and when I am in the GUI I am running as the generic Knoppix user.

I am so close I am sure I am just missing something simple. I guess I could copy data out of the shell to the floppy drive. But I would really like file access from the GUI so I can burn a CD to back up all the data.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks In Advance,
bighdaddy1@yahoo.com

Well you could always just launch Konqueror as root. ;) I would not suggest surfing the web w/ a rootlaunched Konqueror however.

Thank you for the suggestion. I am not sure how to do that, but I did come across something else in my searches. I found a post that shows how to modify the login script to log in as root instead of knoppix as default. I am wondering if this would fix the problem because root has the rights to see hda1 no problem in the shell and I am wondering if this would cary over to the GUI as well.

Thanks Again.

Using Konq as root is easy. Just do the following in a shell.

Code:

---

sudo konqueror

---

Then navigate to /mnt/hda1.

BTW, remember that unless your using one of the remasters that has the Captive NTFS stuff on it, DO NOT try to write to NTFS. Reading and copying is fine however.

aay,

Thanks a lot for the info...I actually found that trick yesterday after seaching through the message boards yesterday. It worked like a charm.

I was finally able to get access to all the files on hda1 from the GUI. I actually ended up using the Linux Defender version of Knoppix. I found this version to be much more stable as it was able to detect and install nearly all of my hardware. One benifit of using defender was that I was finally able to use my network card which ended up being critical. Once I accessed my files I attempted to burn a CD using KB3 in SU mode. I was able to prepare the CD and start the burn process, but since the Laptop only has 1 CD drive I had no way of burning the CD and keeping the OS up and running.

Instead of trying to figure out how to resolve this issue I connected the Laptop to my network and FTP'd the files to another computer with a CD writer on it.

I would highly recomend Linux Defender given how easy it was to use. There are only 2 things I was never really able to figure out. The first is the previously mentioned 1 CD drive issue, is there an easy solution to this issue?

The second is I had a problem using the NTFS write package in Linux Defender. It is sitting right there on the desktop and I am able to run it fine. All looks well when I am running it and it is able to find all the necessary files. However, when it is done it reboots the machine, which I kind of expected, but when it starts back up it is as though I never ran that package because I have no write access to NTFS. The link is still sitting there on the desktop and I can run it again fine, but the same exact thing keeps happening. Does anyone know why this happens or how to fix it?

Oh yeah one other thing, I would really like to know how to logon as su while running from the CD. It always logs in as the Knoppix user which has almost no rights.

That's about it though. I will for sure be keeping my copy of Linux Defender with me at all times. I really like it.

Thanks for all your help.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bighdaddy1

The first is the previously mentioned 1 CD drive issue, is there an easy solution to this issue?

---

This is the first time I've heard of Defender so I have no idea if it works this way but w/ Knoppix if you have 1G of system RAM you can put the entire disk into RAM w/ the toram cheatcode. Or you could also boot the image from hdd which in turn would leave your cdrom drive free for use.

Quote:

---

Oh yeah one other thing, I would really like to know how to logon as su while running from the CD. It always logs in as the Knoppix user which has almost no rights.

---

1) Open a terminal
2) Type su and voila! you are root.

That seemed a very obvious thing to me however I see this question so frequently that it must not be that obvious. :shock: Is it not in the documentation?

Great, thanks a lot for the tips. I did not know there was that much RAM available. That should be exactly what I need.

I never thought of opening a console...actually I did not even know what the console was used for. Sorry but I am obviously pretty new to Linux, or any flavor of Unix for that matter. However, it sounds like opeining a console in Linux would be almost identical to using Terminal Services in Windows to log onto the same machine in a seperate session. I will be trying that one shortly.

Just an FYI Linux Defender is simply Knoppix 3.3 with some added functionality...NTFS Write support to be specific. However, I did find that it had more drivers available for my hardware.

Thanks again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bighdaddy1

I never thought of opening a console...actually I did not even know what the console was used for. Sorry but I am obviously pretty new to Linux, or any flavor of Unix for that matter. However, it sounds like opeining a console in Linux would be almost identical to using Terminal Services in Windows to log onto the same machine in a seperate session. I will be trying that one shortly.

---

Hmmm well sort of but not really. Never used windows terminal services before.
You can actually start another X session in a nested window if you like but that's another story. Getting root in a terminal window gives you root access but only in that terminal. You are still logged in as user. You should almost never need to log in as root. I would recommend getting very familiar w/ the CLI (command line interface) as it is an integral part of Linux.

I have to agree with Rickenbacherus, about using the command line interface more...

Thanks to Rickenbacherus, I only run a "user" login, and "shell out" to a root when I need it. Most of the time, if something you are running requires root priveledges, it will pop up a password window to enter the password for the root account...

Another nice thing about the command line interface, is that when you run a program from the KMenu, you might not be getting all of the stuff that is going on "in the background". Some of this "background" stuff can be error messages, or problems that the program is finding when it is starting up.

I found this out when I was playing Frozen-Bubble - from the Menu I would run it, and for some unknown reason, sound would be disabled - no errors, no pop-ups saying anything, just no sound.

If I ran that same game from a command line prompt - #frozen-buuble -=- it stated that it couldn't find a viable sound device to play, so it was disableing sound in the game. This kind of information can be instrumental in detecting, and resolving problems with any program, or the system, for that matter.

Some programs refuse to run from a Menu, but "every" program will run from a command line. This just shows, even more, how important the command line is in Linux.

Hope this helps,
Cuddles