unable to mount and read hard disk partitions.

[mersonmathew]

Hi. I am a linux newbie and recently tried to check out knoppix live cd. There are three primary partitions in my hard drive and one extended partition. Two of the primary partitions run windows(98 and xp). The third partition is blank. Knoppix boots up alright but does not show the hard drive partitions on the desktop. I have tried mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1. Even adding an entry /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 to /etc/fstab does not work. I get error message saying "/dev/hda5 already mounted or /mnt/hda5 busy". By modifying desktop properties I was able to display unmounted hard drive partitions onto the desktop. On trying to mount hda1 from the desktop I get the error message "only root can mount". Trying to mount from root too does not work.
Please help

[malaire]

I can try to give some help.

If you try to mount partitions manually using the "mount" command, I'd suggest that you use some other directory than /mnt/xxx (and don't modify /etc/fstab)

e.g.

mkdir /home/knoppix/hda1
sudo mount /dev/hda1 /home/knoppix/hda1

or

mkdir /home/knoppix/hda1
sudo mount -t vfat -o umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 /dev/hda1 /home/knoppix/hda1

The two primary partitions are probably /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2.
Empty extended partition is probably /dev/hda5, but if it doesn't have any filesystem on it, then you can't mount that partition before you create a filesystem on it.

[Harry Kuhman]

Empty extended partition is probably /dev/hda5, but if it doesn't have any filesystem on it, then you can't mount that partition before you create a filesystem on it.

good info, but the empty extended partition would likely be hda3 or hda4, but can not be mounted. Once you create a logical drive(or many drives) in the extended partition they take on names like hda5, hda6 and so on. But the unmountable extended partition has to taake up one of the four partition spaces in the partition table (1 through 4). So it can never be hda5, but the first logical drive in it can be.

[RandomGoon]

Harry, not to step on your wizened toes but aren't the identifiers /hda(1 through 4) reserved for primary partitions only? I thought once you started with extended/logical partitions you immediately got /hda(5 through ?). Don't get me wrong, I could have misunderstood the Linux naming conventions but this is what I was lead to believe.

'Goon

[Harry Kuhman]

Harry, not to step on your wizened toes but aren't the identifiers /hda(1 through 4) reserved for primary partitions only? I thought once you started with extended/logical partitions you immediately got /hda(5 through ?).

Absolutely. hda1 through hda4 are real or primary partitions. hda5 and beyond are "logical drives" Logical drives reside on an extended partition, but they are not the extended partition, the extended partition is one of the 4 physical partitions that can exist on any hard disk (limited to 4 because of the tiny size of the partition table, just 64 bytes at the end of sector 0 track 0 cylinder 0). So the extended partition itself can never be hda5, although it can contain hda5, hda6 and other logical drives. Of course, you can never really mount the extended partition (just the logical drive or drives on the extended partition), so the hda3 or hda4 name would never come into play. And a nasty little truth about disk partitioning is that the "first" slot isn't always hda1, they can move around depending on how the OS looks at the partition spaces (it was never well defined in a published spefication and some OSs look at the partition table in a different order than others). But an extended partition is one of the 4 real partitions on the disk, not one of the logical partition that live in the extended partition. Or to put it another way, you can't store an extended partition in an extended partition, it has to be in one of the first 4 partition positions.

[mersonmathew]

Thanks Malaire, Harry et al for the input.

I tried the two codes but I still get the same error message.

mount: /dev/hda5 already mounted or /home/knoppix/hda5 busy

I find that knoppix is able to detect the removable usb drive(already mounted). However it can only read from the usb drive and not write to it and I find that I cannot change the read write permissions even from root using chmod. It tells me that the disk is only readable whereas I could do both read and write from windows.

[Harry Kuhman]

Thanks Malaire, Harry et al for the input.

I tried the two codes but I still get the same error message.

mount: /dev/hda5 already mounted or /home/knoppix/hda5 busy

I find that knoppix is able to detect the removable usb drive(already mounted). However it can only read from the usb drive and not write to it and I find that I cannot change the read write permissions even from root using chmod. It tells me that the disk is only readable whereas I could do both read and write from windows.

Actually, my input was not to you, it was just about the hda5/extended partition remark.

Your problem has been covered many many times before. You could have read through the forums and/or the wiki and found the answers. I don't know your partition types and can't guess since you mix Win98 and XP, but see answer #6 for some info.

[malaire]

However it can only read from the usb drive and not write to it and I find that I cannot change the read write permissions even from root using chmod. It tells me that the disk is only readable whereas I could do both read and write from windows.

If partition is already mounted as read-only, you can remount it as read-write with

sudo mount -o remount,rw /mnt/hdb5

[mersonmathew]

Thanks malaire!
Harry you probably think that I have asked a dumb question. I wouldn't have posted if my query could be solved by the published solutions in the forum. None of the codes worked and neither does answer number 6 solve the problem.

I have since installed Debian and can now mount all my partitions. ...but they still can't be mounted on knoppix. Wonder if knoppix has a bug.