[LinuxEXP] Mounting the FAT

Just to separate my own experiences in separate posts, considering I don't really like to jam everything into one entry. :)

I believe I'd be spending some time jotting down some of the challenges that I am facing as a relatively new Linux user (well... although I did have some exposure to it when I am in college 3 years ago, but I only and actually use it now)

Mounting a FAT32 (Windows9x/NT/XP) partition

Difficulty: Easy
[:Reference:] http://www.linuxforum.com/linux_tutorials/14/1.php

1. Login as root from a terminal



2. Create a directory in your /mnt folder where you want to mount your FAT32 partition. This can be done by executing
   mkdir /mnt/fat32partition
   , which fat32partition is the name of the folder that I'll be mounting my FAT32 partition into.



3. Execute fdisk -l to list down the device file of the FAT32 partition. Note down the device file name of the partition.
   
   The output should look something like this:
   

   
      Device ... System
   /dev/hda1     HPFS/NTFS
   /dev/hda2     Linux
   /dev/hda3     Extended
   /dev/hda4     W95 FAT32 (LBA)
   /dev/hda5     Linux LVM
   

   
   
   In this scenario, /dev/hda4 is the device file of the partition that we're going to mount.


4. The next thing is to edit /etc/fstab. Open the file using your favourite text editor (vi, emacs, or any GUI based text editor would do), and add the following line at the bottom of the file (Quoting the article in LinuxForum):
   
   /dev/Y /mnt/X vfat users,owner,ro,umask=000 0 0
   
   "where Y is the partition number of the Fat32 partition and X is the name of the directory you created in step 2. Note that this will allow ALL users READ ONLY access to the disk. To allow Read and Write access to ALL users, change the ro to rw. If you want only root to have Read and Write access (while other users have READ ONLY access), change the ro to rw and umask=000 to umask=022."
   
   Then, obviously, is to save the changes you have made. :)



5. Then run mount -a and viola! Your FAT32 drive is now mounted and you can access the data in it! :)
   
   And the coolest thing is that you can now exchange file between OSes easily, provided that you set the correct setting in the umask field :).

[LinuxEXP] Fedora Core 4

Finally, I finally got my Fedora Core 4 running smoothly :). And I'm really glad to say that I'm happy using it, and I didn't find much problems in doing all the things that I wanted: As in all the basic tasks that I'd usually do.

The only gripe that I have is still the installation and stringing things to get things work. As much as the process has been improved and simplified over the past few years, it's still get me frustrated when I have to deal with some of the incompatibilities/"not supported by distro" problems. It's really like having myself going back to those Windows95 days when I struggle to get some simple things to work. (more specifically, device drivers!)

Currently I'm fooling around with it :), as well as pinging up yum for any applications that would make my Linux experience enjoyable.

I'll jot down more about it in the future, relating to some of the things that I have learnt from the Internet.

Fresh Install

It's been a while ever since I last formatted my PC. From memory, the last time being like... 5 years? (Good ol' Win9x days :p)

Suprisingly my WinXP survived for a much longer period of time, and not to mention how many times I got myself burnt/screwed-up with the new found Administration privileges and the nastily complex NTFS administration (OK, probably it wasn't THAT complex, but security functions and user rights did baffle me some time or the other).

After a year of tolerating with those unwanted nonsense, with my Windows system's setting getting creaky, squeaky, rusty, [insert any creative mechanical defect terminology here], etc., I guess it's a good time to tear the whole Windows partition down and start afresh (Hmm... Computer Armageddon, anybody? :p).

Now I'm getting everything installed, now the only annoyance left is to go through Windows Update... using a dialup connection. But then again, with the current Genuine Advantage Program in place, I'm -not- sure whether this will work out (*cough* you know what I mean :p *cough*).

I got all the application I needed in place now, but I'm sure that sooner or later junk will start to plague it. Hope everything's going to be OK by then :p.

In other news, I managed to get my Linux partition updated to Fedora Core 4. Thus far everything's working. What really surprising is that the bootup speed is much more faster than what I used to remember. And that's really a good sign.

Now the only thing I need to do is to get my modem and printer to talk to Linux, hook onto the Internet, getting my MP3s, DVDs to play, learning how to burn CDs, setting up some testing servers and get my Windows partition to show up in the filesystem... among other task that we took for granted in Windows.

And it does seems like it's going to be a long journey ahead for me to be proficient in both Windows and Linux :p. (probably I'll become a Linux convert by then? LOL :p)

Felixleong.com: The Blueprint

And yes, I'm still alive. Just not feeling that techy lately :p.

I'm starting to work on my FelixLeong.com website plan, with the blueprints in my head. However, as ambitious I originally was, I realised that it's pretty unfeasable for me to develop my own content management system (CMS) from scratch.

So I really wanted to get one good, flexible, secure, open sourced CMS package. Probably it's much more better for me to learn PHP this way than to work everything on my own.

As I was cruising around looking (shopping?) for some green pastures, I stumbled into OpenSourceCMS, which has quite an extensive list of these packages. But it just seems... too much for me to choose @_@.

Does anyone has any good recommendation for me to start with?

Currently my basic requirements are as follows:
- Image/photo and video gallery, with the ability to set captions and displaying thumbnails and file details
- RSS generation and parsing, so that I can notify users with any new updates, as well as pull RSS feeds/content to my site
- Easy learning curve and the flexibility to develop my own themes
- Article/content management (Ahem... wasn't that the MAIN purpose of a CMS in the first place :p)
- (Optional) The ability to auto-generate website update news, with my own personal description and everything