Computer woes

[mapsedge]

So, my Windows 2000 file server finally died. It's ten years old at least, so there was no big surprise in that. I grabbed my only unused box - an old temperamental machine I inherited that can't install Windows2K^† but did take Xandros* - and hooked it up. Worked great. The NTFS formatted drive I used for storage read, wrote and shared fine.

Then Ubuntu 7.0 came out. Hmmm, says I, since Xandros is now a Microsoft product, let's try Ubuntu.

Bad move.

Very bad move.

Won't mount an NTFS drive. I've altered the fstab file, tried to mount from a terminal session, done three different methods from three different websites. Can't do it because I'm not "root".  Can't do it because of "unspecified error".  Can't do it because..."well, no reason, just because".  Houston, that's no-go for launch. 

Okay, I guess I'll go back to Xandros. What? I tossed the CD when Microsoft bought them? Shit.

You know, before the M$ announcement, you could do a .torrent search and find a hundred instances of Xandros, from the crappy free version all the way up to Home Premium, with down speeds as high as my DSL connection would allow. Now? Not so much. ETA: 1w 3d. 

That number fluctuates wildly.  Fifteen minutes ago, it said "5h 10m".  I'm glad there's nothing mission critical on the drive.


^† "Hardware error" on boot-up. I had one of the most talented hardware guys I know look at it who couldn't narrow down the problem.
* Xandros is yet another Linux distro, but made to look and behave like M$ Windows.

Comments

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Just confirmed it by looking at ubuntu.com; Gutsy Gibbon does support read/write access to NTFS file systems by default out of the box.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

And, apparently doesn't like it when you try to mount an NTFS drive from a Windows box that wasn't shut down correctly. I did finally get the thing mounted and shared.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

That's for safety's sake; best not to mount a potentially broken file system and walk on data. Run fsck on it before mounting.