How do you use the darned file manager?
Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: How do you use the darned file manager?
started by: Joshua
Posted by Joshua on Oct. 15 2004,04:49
Hello...I had this old laptop I got DSL running on (From what I can tell, a lot of people did this). It runs all nice and shiny... but I can't figure out how to access the hard drive! Aurrrgh! At least, I'm PRETTY sure I can't... maybe I'm just being dumb.
Does anybody know how I can read my laptop's hard drive? I don't think Linux should have a problem reading it, because I tried to install Suse Linux over the screwed-up Win98 partition before (and, of course, KDE needed too much ram and I got stuck at a BASH prompt or something <shrug>)...but it should be formatted in a Linux-y way.
Also, I have a jumpdrive I want to be able to use too. Is the precess for looking at that the same? Or different?
Anyhow, thanks for any help I get. It will be much appreciated.
I am soo not 1337.
Josh
Posted by Joshua on Oct. 15 2004,04:51
Did I post in the wrong place? I feel even more dumb. 
Josh
Posted by ypx on Oct. 15 2004,06:16
Well, i think it's the right place to ask...so, back to your problem.
1 - there's a mounting dockapp in the bottom right corner of the screen, search for your hard drive (hd*) using the arrows and mount it using the other button, wich should become green
2 - using emelfm, you should now be able to access it's content in /mnt/hd*
here, * stands for a number.
hope this helps.
Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 15 2004,12:34
OK, here is the quick tour:Right-click on an empty area of the desktop to bring up the Fluxbox "Start Menu". Then choose Apps -> Tools -> Emelfm -> Emelfm to start up the Emelfm file manager.
Emelfm is a "two pane" file manager that works like Midnight Commander or like the old Norton Commander for MSDOS.
You can use the toolbar to navigate to different directories in both the left hand window pane and the right side window pane.
You use the buttons in the middle of the program to perform operations on the highlighted file, or you can use the Right-Click context menu for additional choices.
For example, if you want to do a "copy", you can highlight a file in the left pane and then press the "copy" button and it will create a copy of the file in the directory that is shown in the right pane. It will also copy from right to left if the highlighter is selecting a file that is in the right pane.
Here is an example of how to connect to a Windows drive that is located at partition "hda1" (may be different for your computer):
1) Open emelfm
2) Navigate to the /mnt directory.
3) Highlight and Right-Click on the "hda1" directory (it is also known as a "mount point").
4) Choose "Mount" from the context menu.
5) The "C:\" drive contents now appear inside the /mnt/hda1 directory.
HTH
Posted by Joshua on Oct. 16 2004,03:53
Thanks--it worked! It was soo cool. So I'm happy now. <aura of contentness>.Josh
Posted by somerville32@hotmail.com on Oct. 18 2004,22:19
Thanks for replying to Joshua's issue. I'll add an FAQ entry when I get a chance. It's on my todo list 
Posted by Snapafun on April 21 2005,12:17
Er... nearly got there.Before coming here I had mounted my hda5 { mandrake installed /home directory } and cd'ed into my /home directory only to discover that I cannot see anything in there.
I tried the GUI way mentioned here with the same result and from the cli changed permissions on the /home directory to 660.
Still cannot see anything, # ls just returns me to the prompt ( sudo su ) having not printf anything even using the # ls -al option.
Any ideas ?
Posted by mikshaw on April 21 2005,13:32
You can't see the files even as root? That's very odd.Where did you mount hda5? When you say "/home" do you mean "/home" or "/mnt/hda5/home"?
If you have a /home directory in use by Mandr* you should be careful setting permissions in a different system or you risk fowling things up in Mandr*. Directory permissions should be at least 700. Execute (7) for directories means you can enter the directory. If you chmod 660, then not even the owner can view its contents (unless the owner is root).
The first thing i thought was that you have a different user id on each of your systems. The result of this is a user on one system not having access to the home directory on the other system. One way to change this is to chown the mandr* home and its contents, making sure directories are 777. I don't recommend doing this, though, for privacy and security reasons. A safer option is to modify the user and group IDs of each user to match. I've done this with the 3 linux systems on my box, and it works well. Three users with UID 1001 and GID 50. This basically gives you the same ID on all linux boxes, effectively being the same user with permissions to all the same directories.
Posted by Snapafun on April 22 2005,13:56
Hmm.... Me not being clear enough I think.Basically, I may wish to use DSL as a Rescue option sometime, etc.
My problem is that I can mount /dev/hda5 and cd to the mount directory [ /mnt/hda5 ] and cd one further to the "home" directory but can go no further.
Now here is the part that has me confused. hda5 is the 'home' directory / partition on /dev/hda5 ~ so how come I get to see a 'home' directory at all ? Mounting it to /mnt/hda5 ought to mean that you would read /mnt/hda5 as you would when reading the /home directory normally
?? { In other words = take /mnt/hda5 to read as /home.}I believe this is where things are breaking down as the 'home' directory is already mounted.
I took note of your 'permissions' warnings and will be damn carefully from now on as I wish to 'fix' things properly now and not look to re-installing anymore. Things this time round seemed to have "corrected" in the transition OK as I'm sending this email from within the mdk installation I tried DSL on.