Persistent home and NTFS

[mattperkins26]

From reading a lot of the discussions in this forum, I realize that I cannot create a persistent home file (knoppix.img) on an NTFS partition. Although it hasn't been stated, I am assuming this is because this file would be resized as needed by Knoppix, which would endanger my NTFS partition.

Unfortunately, my situation is that I only have an NTFS partition, and I cannot shrink it or change the drive in any way. So my question is, why can't I mount a file on the NTFS partition as its own partition (size is fixed) and then point to this new partition as the home directory?

I have a file on my NTFS partition that is formatted as ext2 that I use in a different Linux distribution (I can read and write to this file safely when running this Linux distribution because as a mounted partition, the size does not change.) Using the Knoppix live-CD version, I was able to mount this file as a partition and view the files within. But I could not write to the file. I am assuming that this is because the Knoppix Live-CD makes the NTFS partition read-only, and therefore my formatted file is also read only. Trying to mount as read/write caused an error.

Is there a way I can force the Live-CD to make the NTFS partition read-write, or at least make my formatted file read-write? Can I use GRUB or LILO to mount a file as a partition and then set home = that partition? I am sure with the smarts I have seen in this forum, someone can help me work a solution to this problem.

Thanks!
Matt

[CrashedAgain]

Have you tried 'mount -t ntfs -rw /dev/hdaxx /mnt/hdaxx' from root console. I'm just guessing, I don't have ntfs but I think a consloe command should force it.
Persistent home doesn't change size, when you create a persistent home as a file it asks for the amount of space you want o allocate & sets it at that size. but I don't think the create persistent home script will write to ntfs 'cause it doesn't use captive ntfs & a direct write will damage the ntfs system.

[mattperkins26]

I can try to mount the drive with -rw, but you are right when you say that creating the file would mess up the NTFS drive. But what if I have already created the file, and knoppix reads and writes to the file without changing the size? My understanding is that this is ok as long as you don't try to change the size of the drive.

So I guess I want to know how to point to a persistent home in knoppix without going through the creation script. I would also need to know what is on the persistent home (is it a file formatted as ext2?) I think if I did this, Knoppix could use the file as long as it booted with write permission.

This is a lot of stuff, but I would like to try. Can anyone give me some info on wat kind of file the persistent home is, and how I can read and write to this file on NTFS right from the bootup?