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Thread: Renaming Hard Drives/Partitions

  1. #1
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    Renaming Hard Drives/Partitions

    Fast question

    How do you rename the hard drive partitions? I've tried using F2 or selecting "Rename", but when I do, I wind up with the entire partition being copied to another area on the hard drive.

    All I want to do is "name" my partitions something like:
    "Knoppix 3.7", or "Windows 98 SE", or "Exchange", or "Mepis", or "Archives" - well you get the picture. I'm not interested in making extra copies of the existing partition! If I wanted that, I'd use "partimage".

    Anyone help?

    GMD

  2. #2
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    Hard drives are like cats. It doesn't matter what you name them - they don't listen anyway!

    Where do you want the names to show up? The partitions themselves don't store names.

    -- Ed

  3. #3
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    If you're thinking that you can give paritions labels, the way you do in Windows (i.e. select the "C:\" drive in Explorer, press F2, and give it a name), well, partitions can have labels in Linux, but they're hardly ever seen. For example, I labeled my "home" partition (hdb1) "home", just for the heck of it, when I created the partition, but the label's never used.

    (You can use the "e2label" utility to label Linux partitions.)

    In Linux, you usually create a directory and mount the partition to the directory (even the root partition, which has to be mounted on the "/" directory, if you will). You can name the directory whatever you want, although spaces are a bad idea, since it causes extra work when using the command line (you have to use escape characters or surround the whole thing with quotes).

    For example, say I had a Windows partition (hda1) that I wanted to mount at /media/Win_C. I'd have to create the directories if they didn't already exist, and then mount the partition with the command

    mount /dev/hda1 /media/Win_C -t ntfs -o ro

    The name of the directory doesn't matter, nor does it have anything to do with the label of the partition. I could just as easily create a directory named /mnt/Bill-Gates-Sucks and mount the same partition there:

    mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/Bill-Gates-Sucks -t ntfs -o ro

    And, to make Linux mount the partition every time you boot into Linux, you have to make an entry into /etc/fstab ("fstab" = file system table).

  4. #4
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    What he said. I was thinking of partition tables, which don't hold labels. That's why they don't show up with fdisk or parted.

    But the label you create or show with e2label can be used in the first column of /etc/fstab, for example. And it will even show up when you're in Windows if you run Partition Magic. (And a label you apply in Partition Magic will show up in Linux when you run e2label, too.)

    -- Ed

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    Thanks All

    Where I want the labels to show up are in KDE, and Konqueror or FireFox when I'm "browsing" my computer. Right now all they show up as is like
    Hard Disc (hdb5) [/mnt/hdb5]
    wich does not remind me of what I put there. When you have two, 120G hard drives partitioned into 10G and 40G partitions, it can get a bit confusing on where things are!

    So you say I can go into fstab and name all the points that my partitions are to be loaded to? I'll have to try that this weekend!

    Thanks again

    Have a good weekend!

    GMD :P

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by mr_ed
    What he said. I was thinking of partition tables, which don't hold labels. That's why they don't show up with fdisk or parted.

    But the label you create or show with e2label can be used in the first column of /etc/fstab, for example. And it will even show up when you're in Windows if you run Partition Magic. (And a label you apply in Partition Magic will show up in Linux when you run e2label, too.)

    -- Ed
    OK - I've tried puting partition labels everywhere. None of them show!

    Can you show me a line from your fstab with a working LABEL?

    Thanks

  7. #7
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    So why not just rename the mountpoint? For example the partition I backup to is called /mnt/images instead of /mnt/hda7 and the line in fstab is:
    /dev/hda7 /mnt/images ext3 defaults,rw,noauto,users 0 2

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Markus
    So why not just rename the mountpoint? For example the partition I backup to is called /mnt/images instead of /mnt/hda7 and the line in fstab is:
    /dev/hda7 /mnt/images ext3 defaults,rw,noauto,users 0 2
    rriigghhtt!!

    I go into fstab and change the mount point names li you show.
    /dev/hda1 /mnt/Windows_98 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0
    /dev/hdb2 /mnt/Mepis reiserfs noauto,users,exec 0 0
    etc
    Now I return to KDE and try to "mount" one of these drives and I get an error
    Could not mount device.

    The reported error was:

    mount: can't find /mnt/hdb2 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
    So I think - ok - need to reboot to make things happen. Right? WRONG!

    I reboot and my changes in fstab have all been reset to
    # Added by KNOPPIX
    /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0
    # Added by KNOPPIX
    /dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0
    # Added by KNOPPIX
    /dev/hda6 /mnt/hda6 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0
    # Added by KNOPPIX
    /dev/hda7 none swap defaults 0 0
    # Added by KNOPPIX
    /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0
    # Added by KNOPPIX
    This is no longer fun! It has tipped into the "frustrated" side!

    Where do I go from here?

    Thanks

    GMD

  9. #9
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    With renaming the mountpoint I actually meant: "mv /mnt/hdb2 /mnt/Mepis" as the mountpoint to where you mount the partition is under /mnt. Well, some mountpoints are under / like cdroms.
    After you rename the dir (mountpoint) under /mnt you just need to change the correspondent line in fstab to the new name.

    BTW, what kind of hdinstall do you have when fstab gets changed between reboots? If knoppix or beginner style add "nofstab" to the append line for kernels in /etc/lilo.conf , save the file and run "lilo -v" for the changes to take effect.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Markus
    [snip]BTW, what kind of hdinstall do you have when fstab gets changed between reboots? If knoppix or beginner style add "nofstab" to the append line for kernels in /etc/lilo.conf , save the file and run "lilo -v" for the changes to take effect.
    I did a beginners install to take advantage of the automatic detection. but I got away from LILO ASAP and am happly running GRUB. I assume I can change the line in GRUB with a
    nofstab
    entry? This way when I modify fstab and restart knoppix, I won't loose all my hard work?

    So I modify my grub menu list to something like this?
    title Knoppix 3.7 at hda2, kernel 2.6.7
    #root (hd0,1)
    kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.7 root=/dev/hda2 nomce quiet vga=791 ro ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off splash lang=us fb1024x768 nofstab
    initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.7
    savedefault
    #boot
    ?

    Looks good anyway...

    Thanks

    GMD

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