cpl of questions

**mreyna16** · May 14th, 2013

I am currently dual booting windows 8 and ubuntu 13.04 both uefi and i have a cpl of questions...

how can i hide ubuntu drives (partitions) in windows without affecting ubuntu and vise versa?

how can i uninstall software such as boot-repair? i dont think ill need it anymore and id like to remove it

last but not least, i have a fat formatted partition to be used for my media files by both windows and ubuntu... so, in ubuntu, how can i link my music folder in /home to the music folder in my other partition? id like for my music folder in ubuntu to show whatever is inside plus the other music folder i have in the separate partition

**fantab** · May 14th, 2013

Are you dual booting with WUBI? otherwise windows will not show Linux partitions.

Use Synaptic package manager to uninstall Boot-repair. Use option 'mark for complete removal'.

Instead of FAT use NTFS. But that's ok. to link your media files:

ln -s /path/to/folder /location/of/link

**mreyna16** · May 15th, 2013

Originally Posted by fantab

Are you dual booting with WUBI? otherwise windows will not show Linux partitions.

Use Synaptic package manager to uninstall Boot-repair. Use option 'mark for complete removal'.

Instead of FAT use NTFS. But that's ok. to link your media files:

ln -s /path/to/folder /location/of/link

im new to linux, but out of the top of my head i dont think so... wubi is when u use the installation from windows right? and what i did is created for both os's a uefi usb stick and installed them from there seperately

ill try out synaptic

i was under the impression that ubuntu could not see ntfs partitions but now that i think about it, then how is it seeing my windows partitions lol

im gonna format it first to ntfs then ill try that command out

**Kopkins** · May 15th, 2013

A better, but more difficult (for beginners) way to do that, is to edit the fstab file. That file contains the information of where to mount your partitions when you boot. I don't think that putting a symbolic link would allow for automatic mounting of the partition with the music on it. So before using your music I think you would have to mount your partition each time, or basically Ubuntu will think that the files don't exist.

Before editing your fstab file you should make a backup of it in case something goes wrong.

Code:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.old

If you need to revert the changes for any reason use this:

Code:

sudo mv /etc/fstab.old /etc/fstab

Then you need the UUID for your music partition. I'm assuming you know the partition number of your music partition. For this example I'll use /dev/sda5.

Run the command

Code:

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

and you should get an output that has the UUID's highlighted followed by their partition number.

For example it might look like

Code:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 May 13 12:31 a3ca2474-5ec5-4360-a351-4abf127db18e -> ../../sda6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 May 13 12:31 b6cce33a-f9c3-4064-84ce-98d7d8b3a1fb -> ../../sda5

This part 'b6cce33a-f9c3-4064-84ce-98d7d8b3a1fb' is what you want for /dev/sda5 in this example.

Then you'll want to open up the fstab file for editing. Make sure you have the original backed up!

Code:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

You should have something like this.

Code:

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# /dev/sda4
UUID=4e450a74-d94d-45af-870e-1e156b9cf99a       /               ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1

# /dev/sda3
UUID=7d545aa0-da1a-44c7-9a22-a78a30d5e453       /boot           ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2

# /dev/sda1 LABEL=EFI
UUID=70D6-1701          /boot/efi       vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro      0 2

Then you just need to add your partition

You should be able to just follow the other entries, just add yours onto the end like:

Code:

# /dev/sda5
UUID=<your_UUID>       /home/<your_username>/music           ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2

Except where it says UUID= you want to make sure you put in the UUID you got from the earlier command and make sure you change the <your_username> to whatever your commandline username is.

Then all you have to do is reboot and you should have the music partition mounted at /music in your home directory.

Good luck!

Kopkins

**mreyna16** · May 15th, 2013

Originally Posted by Kopkins

A better, but more difficult (for beginners) way to do that, is to edit the fstab file. That file contains the information of where to mount your partitions when you boot. I don't think that putting a symbolic link would allow for automatic mounting of the partition with the music on it. So before using your music I think you would have to mount your partition each time, or basically Ubuntu will think that the files don't exist.

Before editing your fstab file you should make a backup of it in case something goes wrong.

Code:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.old

If you need to revert the changes for any reason use this:

Code:

sudo mv /etc/fstab.old /etc/fstab

Then you need the UUID for your music partition. I'm assuming you know the partition number of your music partition. For this example I'll use /dev/sda5.

Run the command

Code:

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

and you should get an output that has the UUID's highlighted followed by their partition number.

For example it might look like

Code:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 May 13 12:31 a3ca2474-5ec5-4360-a351-4abf127db18e -> ../../sda6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 May 13 12:31 b6cce33a-f9c3-4064-84ce-98d7d8b3a1fb -> ../../sda5

This part 'b6cce33a-f9c3-4064-84ce-98d7d8b3a1fb' is what you want for /dev/sda5 in this example.

Then you'll want to open up the fstab file for editing. Make sure you have the original backed up!

Code:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

You should have something like this.

Code:

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# /dev/sda4
UUID=4e450a74-d94d-45af-870e-1e156b9cf99a       /               ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1

# /dev/sda3
UUID=7d545aa0-da1a-44c7-9a22-a78a30d5e453       /boot           ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2

# /dev/sda1 LABEL=EFI
UUID=70D6-1701          /boot/efi       vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro      0 2

Then you just need to add your partition

You should be able to just follow the other entries, just add yours onto the end like:

Code:

# /dev/sda5
UUID=<your_UUID>       /home/<your_username>/music           ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2

Except where it says UUID= you want to make sure you put in the UUID you got from the earlier command and make sure you change the <your_username> to whatever your commandline username is.

Then all you have to do is reboot and you should have the music partition mounted at /music in your home directory.

Good luck!

Kopkins

that seems practical, but what if i have folders in that partition? i have my music, pictures, videos, etc... im guessing one of the commands above should be changed right? to something more specific? in this case the music folder in that partition

**Kopkins** · May 15th, 2013

This method might not be technically correct, but it should work.

Make a directory in your /home

Code:

#this doesn't have to be in your /home, it could technically be anywhere.
#to make it hidden, we'll make it a .folder. 
#as your user:
cd
mkdir .media

Change the mount location in fstab to /home/user/.media

Then make some symbolic links to the folders in the hidden folder .media.

Let's use the three you mentioned, Music Pictures and Video.

Code:

#for reference, the contents of .media
ls .media
  Music          Pictures          Video

ln -s ~/.media/Music/* ~/Music
ln -s ~/.media/Pictures/* ~/Pictures
ln -s ~/.media/Videos/* ~/Videos

This way, you have a filesystem mounted to a hidden location with it's contents linked to the respective folders you want them in.

Kopkins

**fantab** · May 15th, 2013

Instead of automounting with 'fstab' you can manually mount the partition when needed by just clicking on the partition under 'Devices' from Nautilus, the file explorer. It is after all a data partition and you need it mounted only when you need it. I don't automount my DATA partitons... its a personal thing.

My two cents...