357mag

I did try that but it says "only root can mount none /dev/sda1..." In the MCC someone told me to uncheck the superuser or supermount box and check the user box but it didn't work. Actually I tried many different things in order to access my drive through the desktop icon but nothing has worked. But what may be the problem is that I don't have Mandrake installed on my hard drive, I'm just running off the Live CD. And the same guy told me that the Live CD is "crippled" and you cannot save any configuration changes with it. So at this point I simply may have to buy the retail version and install it and then take it from there.

Anybody?

Well after much monkeying around I have been able to access and view the contents of my zip drive and my USB drive using the console window. After I did that I right clicked on an empty part of the desktop and chose "create new device" and chose a hard drive icon(for accessing my USB drive). Under the device tab I saw these entries: /dev/sda1 /dev/hdc(cdrom) /dev/hdd(cdrom2) /dev/fdo(/mnt/floppy) /dev/hda1(/mnt/win_c) /dev/sda1(/mnt/win_c2) don't know why it's calling my D partition sda1 either. Maybe cuz it's not formatted yet? Well I chose /dev/sda1 cuz that appeared to be the most logical choice. But when I clicked on my new desktop icon now representing my USB drive I got: Could not enter folder /mnt/usb The file location box at the top does say file: /mnt/usb so I think that's is correct, but I don't know why I can't access the contents of my USB drive now graphically with the new icon. And when I issued the mount command in the console window I actually had to type: mount -t auto /dev/sda /mnt/usb I typed sda not sda1 so I don't know why the drop down list under the Device Tab would say /dev/sda1 instead of /dev/sda. Also my D partition under Windows 2000 is not formatted yet(maybe that has something to do with it?) Anyway if you have a clue as to how to successfully set up a desktop icon that works when you click on it that would be good, cuz I don't know.

Well at the command prompt I typed both umount /mnt/zip and umount /mnt/zipdrive and nothing happened. The icon is still there, and I don't think a link has ever been established from the desktop icon to the actual drive cuz when I click on the desktop icon it just opens up a window with nothing in it and in the location box it says file:/mnt/zip. I also tried right clicking on the blank desktop and created a new icon call zip device and chose the /dev/ide...path but when I click on it I've gotten two different error messages. If I can't solve problems like this I probably won't be switching to Linux.

Well I finally got it to work. It typed in mount -t auto /dev/hdb4 /mnt/zipdrive and it said that /dev/hdb4 was already mounted so then I typed ls /mnt/zipdrive and then it showed the files on my zip disk. But now the questions are: 1. What specifically do I type in the /etc/fstab file? 2. How do I go about creating an icon representing the zip disk so when I click on it it opens up the contents of the disk? And this is strange too. Actually there is an icon now for the zip drive on my desktop but I don't know how it got there!

Well I'm logged in as root and I typed diskdrak and it just says "command not found". So that didn't work. And I still don't understand why I can't reproduce what I had done before? I followed the same steps, of creating a new folder, checking to see if the new folder exists, and issuing the mount command but it keeps coming back with "special device/dev/sda1 does not exist." It simply makes no sense, cuz the first time I went through those same steps at least I saw the contents of my USB drive. According to the File Mangager, under the Hardware icon Mandrake calls my zip drive hdb1 so I tried issuing the command with that, and I heard the zip disk spin but thats all it did. It still did not show the contents of the disk.

Well this is strange. I reproduced the steps I took to create a folder called zipdrive and finally issued the mount command: mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/zipdrive And now it says: mount: special device/dev/sda1 does not exist And I sure I typed everything exactly as I had done before. I was going to try out using different names like sda4 or something but now I can't even reproduce what I had done before.

Could you read my above post after trying out your suggestions and post your thoughts?

Well even though you haven't anwered my previous post I decided to give your instructions a try. I completed steps 1, 2, 4, and 4 and successfully created a new directory called zipdrive. I was confused however what to type at the command prompt in step 5 but I tried typing this: mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/zipdrive Then it said: mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /mnt/zipdrive busy mount: according to mtab, /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 is already mounted on /mnt/zipdrive So then I typed this: ls /mnt/zipdrive and it listed a whole bunch of stuff like: arcldr.exe ffastun.ffl arc.setup.exe ffastun.ffo AUTOEXEC.BAT IO.SYS boot.ini linspirelive-4.5.602.iso There were other entries as well but I won't list them. At first I didn't know what I was looking at cuz none of that stuff is on my zip disk. But when I saw linspirelive, SimplyMEPIS, Mandrakelinux-Move, and SUSE-Linux I realized that I must be looking at the contents of my external USB hard drive, not my zipdrive, cuz I downloaded 4 .iso images of different Linux distributions and saved them to my USB drive. So why is it showing the contents of my USB drive instead of my zipdrive? How do we fix it so it shows the contents of my zip drive? My only guess is that sda1 is the name of the USB drive, not the zipdrive. And of course what I really want to do here is to be able to access the contents of both my zip drive and my USB drive through icons on the desktop, so how would I do that?

Well first someone on PCMag's Linux forum told me I can open a console window and type in cat /etc/fstab and it will show a list of all detected and mountable storage present on my system. Well I did that and it showed this: /dev/hdc/ /cdrom /dev/hdd/ mnt/cdrom2 /dev/hda1 /mnt/win _c ntfs /dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs That's all it showed(it listed a bunch of other crytic stuff after each device but I didn't write that down.) So it appears that Mandrake is detecting both my optical drives and my two Windows partitions on my hard drive. It does not list my external USB hard drive or my Zip drive. So does that mean that I can't use Mandrake on my system or can I still go through the steps you outlined and add these drives?

I'm trying out the Live CD called Mandrake Move and I'm pretty much lost with it. I did post one question but I can't remember if I posted it on this site or somewhere else. Anyway at the desktop there are no icons for my external USB hard drive or my Zip drive, or one of my two optical drives. I have both a CD-ROM drive and a DVD-RW drive. It appears that Mandrake is calling my DVD drive hdc(cd-rom). The one fellow who answered my post said that the distro may not mount these drives automatically. He said that I could mount them manually by creating a directory for it to mount to. He went on to say this: mkdir/home/*username*/zipdrive (sub in the actual username for the *username* above) mount/dev/sda1/home/*username*/zipdrive Anyway I don't know how to create a directory. I know how to open a terminal window and I know how to log in as root but that's about all. And if I do create a directory for my zip drive, then would I follow the same process for my USB external drive too? And if I do create these directories will that place icons on my desktop for each drive? I'm just a beginner so I just don't know how to do this stuff, but my first concern is to (if possible) have an icon on the desktop representing each drive on my computer and to be able to access each drive and look at it's contents. That seems like the first natural thing to do.

Anyone?

But if I have two optical drives(one CD-ROM and one DVD) shouldn't I have two desktop icons then? Seems to me I'm losing one whole drive here. Now I right-clicked on the harddrive icon, checked properties, permissions and it said "owner can view content, group forbidden, and others forbidden." If I have Win 2000 and applications installed on my hard drive shouldn't all that stuff show up in the window when I open it? I also unplugged my zip drive, plugged it back in but still no desktop icon for it. And I don't know what you mean by "something under /mnt." What is that and where would I find it? And I checked in Kmail and under the General Tab it says: Your Name: Tim Kangas Email Address: tkangas@accessmn.com So isn't that entered correctly then? But I still can't get my email. Seems to me somewhere in the configuration I should have to enter the incoming and outgoing email address of my ISP but I don't recall actually having to do that.

I put Mandrake Move in my DVD and loaded it up. I was happy that it automatically set up my internet connection so that works, and it also set up my printer, and it also set up my sound. But I can't seem to access my email. I did some reading about Kmail and added an account, put in my username and password, left the host field blank, and tried to access my email but it said, "could not connect to host localhost." Then I tried putting in the address of my ISP's incoming and outgoing mail server(mail.accessmn.com) and tried it again, but it still came up with, "could not connect to host localhost." Any ideas on how to get this setup? I noticed some other things too. There is one icon that says, "CD-ROM" but there is no icon for my DVD drive(unless the icon for my DVD is called "Multimedia Player for CD's and DVD's.) When I clicked on CD-ROM it actually showed the contents of my DVD drive. Now why is that? There is one icon for my A: floppy drive, but there is no icon for my Zip drive. There is an icon for my hard drive as well and when I opened it up the contents were empty. Don't know about that either. Of course I am new to Linux and just experimenting with a few different distros, so basically I know very little about the OS. Any answers you can give me to clear things up would be appreciated. moved from tips & tricks (anon)

I'm interested in seeing if Mandrake will run on my computer so is there a place I can download a Live CD or a Live DVD without paying anything? What I've seen so far is you have to pay even for Mandrake Move. Should be free.