Subject: CCL:Sharing files between Linix and Windows partitions

From: Steven Kirk <Steven.Kirk*at*htu.se>
Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 11:20:00 +0100

Ross Walker wrote:
> Dear Narasinga,
>>I would like to find out if it is possible to share files 
>>between Windows
>>and Linux partitions on the same system? For example, is 
>>there a way to
>>launch a browser(say, IE) in the Windows partition and have 
>>it run off the
>>Apachee web server running on the Linux partition of that system?

Narasinga, do you mean that Windows and Linux should be *running* 
simultaneously ? If so, you will need some kind of 'virtualization' 
software, e.g. VMware , to let you run the two different operating 
systems simultaneously on the same machine.

By the way, the Apache webserver software is also available for Windows. 
  By storing the webpages on a filesystem readable to both Windows and 
Linux (see below), the webserver could be configured to be functionally 
identical regardless of what operating system you are running.

> Linux can mount windows partitions on standard mount points although the
> support will depend on your kernel version and/or what is compiled in. NTFS
> partitions can be mounted read only, you can also mount them as read write
> but this is dangerous.

Yes, you need to make sure that you have a kernel module installed to 
handle NTFS file systems. Take a look here:

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

An alternative route is to use Captive-NTFS 
(http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/)
This relies on Linux finding and reusing the native *Windows* NTFS 
driver files, so this might work well on a Linux-Windows dual-boot 
system. This technique claims to allow full read/write access to NTFS 
partitions, but I haven't personally tested it. I have seen reports that 
Windows XP SP2 breaks Captive-NTFS, but apparently there is a way around 
this (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6261).

Of course, if you set up a Windows FAT32 filesystem somewhere on your 
machine, both Linux and Windows will be able to read and write to it.

> 
> For Windows you can use a program called Explore2fs
> http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm which allows you to
> read Ext2 (and I believe Ext3, since it should be backwards compatible with
> Ext2) file systems under windows.

Seconded - very useful program !

[snipped]
-- 
Dr. Steven R. Kirk          <Steven.Kirk*at*htu.se, S.R.Kirk*at*physics.org>
Dept. of Computer Science, TMD               http://taconet.webhop.org
Univ. of Trollhattan/Uddevalla   Ph: +46 520 475318 Fax:+46 520 475399
P.O. Box 957 Trollhattan 461 29 SWEDEN