How to read and write NTFS partition on Red Hat Linux

I have Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Windows XP on my system. Needless to say it is a dual boot system. Well i have a pen drive which is in the FAT32 file system, i can get it detected fine on my Linux operating system. My problem is that the Windows partition which is in the NTFS file system is not detected in Linux. I would appreciate it if you can tell me the direct commands and also if possible provide some direct information to rpms or any other stuff. I would also need the command to execute them as i am a newbie to Linux right now especially in handling the administrative stuff. Looking forward to your replies, thanks in advance.

This looks a bit tricky to do considering you say you are a newbie to administrative things on Linux. In order to access the NTFS partition you need the support for it first. This support should be compiled into the Linux kernel beforehand. Since you do not have it right now then you might need to recompile the kernel to include NTFS support. Linux partitions are ext4 by default. I think a modern operating system based on linux will be shipped with a software to read and write on a NTFS partition. It is something called as ntfs-3g which you can use for the purpose you mentioned in your question.

I do not have much idea about RHEL4 so i do not know for sure whether it comes or is shipped with a software for reading, writing on a NTFs partition. But most of the linux based distributions are sent like that. My fedora operating system has one which i needed to activate though or rather install through the package manager. If you try and do this through the terminal, that is by recompiling the kernel and stuff then trust me for a newbie it will get very messy and you won't understand the head or tail of it should you get an error. Installing a software or a driver for the purpose is the best bet here.

Well find out which is the XP partition by typing the following command in the terminal, fdisk -l. You can see the content in a root terminal by using the following commands,mkdir /mnt/sda2. Then mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2, followed by ls /mnt/sda2. Remember i assuming here that the Windows XP partition is sda2. A modern Linux distribution should come with a handy tool for this very purpose and i think considering you have RHEL 4, you do not need to do anything extra for this. Also check whether your kernel is new enough to support this first before you become too happy.

First you have to know for sure whether your kernel supports such a feature. NTFS read and write has to be supported by the kernel and only then the drivers and software's you are trying to install or use will work on the system. I don't think RHEL 4 supports that feature so i would suggest you to install a new or the latest installment of your operating system. My Fedora runs at a faster speed and also has these features. Your operating system in comparison seems to be light years behind and is at least 4-5 years behind in that aspect.Try installing the ntfs-3g driver from source just to see if it maybe works for you.

If the kernel doesn't support the read and write privileges for NTFS then you will have problems with the support programs later on so just go for a different installation such as Ubuntu if it is that important to you. And as far as the software part is concerned and shoudl your kernel support it then go for the Paragon NTFS for Linux driver. I used it once before on my Ubuntu installation which was old but did have support for the NTFS privileges. It worked fine without any hassles sot hat would be your best bet. You could also download the fuse package which also automatically mount instead of you doing it from the terminal .