Many people new to Linux who have installed Fedora Core will find that they cannot access thier windows partition. This tutorial documents enabling read only support for Fedora Core systems.

In a terminal become the root user by

And enter the root password you selected during install. You will now be root in your home directory.


Now find your kernel version by typing



Using a web browser such as firefox goto http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora3.html
If you are not using Fedora Core 3 select your appropriate version on the left.
find the file that matches your kernel which you found out with uname.

Do a Save As on the file and save it to your home directory

To install the ntfs support, in the terminal type:

This will install all files with the .rpm extension, you could replace *.rpm with the name of the file you downloaded.

Now you need to login as the root user by typing:

The hyphen will reinitialize the enviroment to that of the root user. Eariler you just had root permissions.


Make the windows mount directory with:



Edit the fstab file to mount windows at boot


Read my other tutorial Hard Drive Basics for Installing Linux to figure out how Linux is seeing your windows partition

Add this line to /etc/fstab

Replacing /dev/hda1 with the correct device file for your windows partition

use Ctrl+o then enter to save


Reboot, your windows partition can now be accessed at /mnt/windows

so sweet ... and here I thought NTFS was somehow encrypted...

ha! Microsoft and Security.

Thx this really did help, the link was the most usfull part, and just so that you know the site has changed. But still this was an excellent tutorial

Awesome ! I was looking for something like this.

Go download ubuntu, the windows partition is automatically there, you just chown it, but im not sure how to make it so you can copy to it. Iv tried modifying /etc/fstab , but no luck. And how do you chmod a whole folder of files and folders?

chmod -R mode folder

-R means recursive

DON'T try to write to an NTFS partition!!!! It's still in the experimental stage and there are absolutely no guarantees!!!!