As it seems that I need to learn the octal protection masks anew each time I have to use them, I'll just post the stuff I go through to make the Windows partitions visible after each time I've installed Debian.

Warning: As I had already gone through this, I faked the lines below. I tried being careful to get them right, but currently they're still untested for my part. If you imitate this, think before you type.



First, set up a group called windows and add myself there:

# addgroup windows
Adding group `windows' (1001)...
Done.
# adduser jani windows
Adding user `jani' to group `windows'...
Done.

Next, make the needed mounting directories under /mnt and set up their owners and rights. Add links to ease shell usage.

# mkdir -p /mnt/Windows/C /mnt/Windows/D
# cd /mnt
# chown -R root.windows Windows
# cd Windows
# chmod 555 C
# chmod 775 D
# ln -s C c
# ln -s D d
# cd ..
# ln -s Windows windows

Now, set up /etc/fstab so that both partitions will be mounted at boot, world-readable, the system partition unwritable for everyone and the work partition writable for everyone in the windows group. For rather sain minded paranoia, deny world readability, although that might lead to problems with things such as using desktop backgrounds from these partitions. Can't remember if I've tried this though, just a gut feeling I have. Anyway, the lines of fstab telling Sid what to do with these, I've written as follows:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/Windows/C ntfs ro,user,gid=1001,fmask=0333,dmask=0222 0 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/Windows/D vfat rw,user,gid=1001,fmask=0113,dmask=0002 0 0