Two linux (RH 9) questions.
 

I put the distro in the title because you never know if it'll help. I think the solutions will be pretty standard across distros, though.

Okay, first question: Is there a way that, after I boot into Windows through GRUB, I can access the files on the ext3 partition of my drive? I hate editing pictures in gimp and not being able to access them.

Second question: What would I have to put on a line in /etc/fstab to mount the Windows partition as /mnt/windows, and give all linux users write access to it? I've looked at a lot of web tutorials on mounting a fat32 partition, but whenever I follow their directions the permissions are funky and I end up not being able to write to it unless I'm on as root.

Any and all help you can give me is greatly appreciated! :D

1) http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

Read only, but I've heard good things about it.

2) What's in there for the windows partition now? I thought all that was needed was in the options section, to have the 'users' option to be in there somewhere

Explore2fs is great, nice to be able to pull linux files from Windows. Just follow it's recomendations on writing from Windows to Linux.

As far as mounting I'm rusty with my linux :(

According to the man page for mount, if you want perms of 755 throughout your vfat partition, then you need the option "umask=022". That should go in the options field of your fstab(should be the fourth field).

The thing to remember with a umask is that it's the inverse of normal chmod permissions :)

Just remember, the above is completely untested.

Ooops, just realised you wanted write for everyone, therefore the umask would be 000.

Thanks for the replies! I've just downloaded Explore2fs, and it is very cool indeed.

I've also (hopefully) set up the fstab file correctly with the new umask option, we'll see how that works soon.

I'll keep you posted.

I've heard that writing to an NTFS filesystem from linux can be dangorous.....

True.. but he's Fat32, isn't he?

The umask should fix your problem in RH accessing your drive, now the other one. I have used a program called Ext2FS Anyhwere, and it allows reading and writing to Ext2 and ext3 drives, I think it might do a few more as well.

The umask won't solve the problem. Umask is used to set the default file creation mask.

You need to modify the /etc/fstab file. In the options column you should have 'defaults, user'. This allows read/write access to all the users and anyone can mount the file system. (The 'user' option is not really needed, but it's good to have it there.)

You're right, it is. That's why it's disabled by default in the kernel. You'd actually have to recompile your kernel with this option turned on for it to be able to do damage. You're actually pretty much guarenteed to destroy the filesystem with any amount of usage...that's why it's more for developers to play around with.

FAT32 has no problems with being written to by a linux OS, I routinely use mine to share music between win and Lin.

My fstab for example (note the Old hard drive section which contains my windows partitions:

/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/hda3 / reiserfs noatime 0 0
/dev/hda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,users 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
#Old Hard Drive
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/oldwindows auto noauto,<b><i>users</i></b> 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /mnt/music auto noauto,<b><i>users</i></b> 0 0
/dev/hdb7 /mnt/oldlinux reiserfs noatime,noauto,<b><i>users</i></b> 0 0

OK, I actually checked my RH and in case of vfat (Fat32) you have explicitly define read/write access (even though the 'users' option includes it).

So here's a sample from my fstab:
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win vfat defaults,users,rw 0 0

First, when using vfat you pass it the umask option when mounting, and those will be the default permissions (due to vfat not having any concept of permissions). ie. "mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/foo /mnt/foo"

Second, the meaning of "defaults" is explained in the man page for mount:
While the option "user" means that any user is allowed to mount the filesystem (as opposed to just root). In the man page it is defined as:
Neither of those options have anything to do with the default permission mask on a filesystem that doesn't support permissions.

But if you add the option "users" than you define who's able to mount the filesystem.
And eventhough "defaults" is defined as "rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async" in case of vfat you must have explicitly define "rw" to give write access to all the users (otherwise it's gonna be "rw" for root and "ro" for everbody else).

No, rw refers to whether any writes to the filesystem are allowed to succeed. It still depends on permissions with rw. In ro, no write will succeed. Try to remount a filesystem as ro ("mount -o remount,ro /") and see if root can still write :)