Formatting

**Spike** · 10-04-2003, 10:42 AM

K, i have installed to knoppix 3.3 onto a 20 gb hard drive, but i also installed it onto a 10 gb one. this is because it did not work from this hard drive. now the problem is how do i format the 10 gb hard drive. i booted to dos and tried typing c:/ but this did not work, what would the drive be called, on the desktop it is called hda5. i tried putting this into dos but it still didn't work?
When i try and access the 10 gb drive it comes up with the error:
"could not mount device
the reported error was:
mount: i could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified."
I think i partitioned the 10 gb drive wrong, making both the swap partition and the linux part logical, instead of making linux part primary.
any 1 know how to fix this?
Also, when i right click on any shortcut on the desktop all the icons on the desktop dissapear, whats up with that?
another slightly annying thing, how do i make numlock come on automatically on startup?
thanks for any help.

**oscar** · 10-04-2003, 05:15 PM

Tools to fix partitions.
DOS:
Partition Magic
Paragon Partition Manager
fdisk

Linux:
Run in a terminal-console
qtparted
fdisk (not easy)

**baldyeti** · 10-04-2003, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Spike

I think i partitioned the 10 gb drive wrong, making both the swap partition and the linux
part logical, instead of making linux part primary.any 1 know how to fix this?

That's no problem. Linux can be installed to logical slices within extended
partitions. For the rest, I am not sure I followed you. Are theses two disks
installed in the same system? Then (assuming IDE), one will be hda and
the other hdb. Take the time to explain your problem better, if you still have one.

**Dave_Bechtel** · 10-06-2003, 06:41 PM

--Post results of ' fdisk -l ' as root.

--You cannot make Linux filesystems from DOS. I highly recommend you go with a journalled filesystem such as reiserfs (' man mkreiserfs ') or ext3. In order to format the partition in Linux, you have to run one of ' mkfs.blah ' on it:

/sbin/jfs_mkfs
/sbin/mkfs
/sbin/mkfs.ext2
/sbin/mkfs.ext3
/sbin/mkfs.jfs
/sbin/mkfs.minix
/sbin/mkfs.msdos
/sbin/mkfs.reiserfs
/sbin/mkfs.vfat
/sbin/mkfs.xfs

--Then you need to set up an entry for it in /etc/fstab. (You also need to make sure that the filesystem is supported in the kernel - either by hardwiring it in, or as a module - but Knoppix makes this easy.) If you use reiserfs, I recommend something like this, as root of course:

' mkdir /mnt/mountpoint ' == Call it what you want
' mkreiserfs /mnt/hda5 ' == The partition you want to format

' jstar /etc/fstab ' and put something like this in (' man fstab ' will tell you more, as well as ' man mount ')

Code:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/mountpoint  reiserfs  defaults,noatime,notail,rw 0 0

--Then ' mount /mnt/mountpoint ' after saving. Now you should make a directory that your non-root user owns and can write to.

' cd /mnt/mountpoint; mkdir blah '
' chown knoppix.knoppix blah ' == Replace knoppix with obvious userid

--Now you can write and use files in /mnt/mountpoint/blah.

--The numlock thing:
Put the following entry at the end of /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh :

Code:

setleds +num

Originally Posted by Spike

K, i have installed to knoppix 3.3 onto a 20 gb hard drive, but i also installed it onto a 10 gb one. this is because it did not work from this hard drive. now the problem is how do i format the 10 gb hard drive. i booted to dos and tried typing c:/ but this did not work, what would the drive be called, on the desktop it is called hda5. i tried putting this into dos but it still didn't work?
When i try and access the 10 gb drive it comes up with the error:
"could not mount device
the reported error was:
mount: i could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified."
I think i partitioned the 10 gb drive wrong, making both the swap partition and the linux part logical, instead of making linux part primary.
any 1 know how to fix this?
Also, when i right click on any shortcut on the desktop all the icons on the desktop dissapear, whats up with that?
another slightly annying thing, how do i make numlock come on automatically on startup?
thanks for any help.

**oscar** · 10-07-2003, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

--You cannot make Linux filesystems from DOS.

Partition Magic, Partition Manager etc etc
all them run under DOS and of course they support linux

**Dave_Bechtel** · 10-07-2003, 07:52 AM

(sigh) Yes, Ok technically you're right but everything from PM 7.0 on has to be started from Windoze, and is only capable of making Swap and ext2 filesystems for Linux AFAIK. I stuck with PM 7.01 personally for monetary reasons, and because I heard of people having problems with the latest ver.

Originally Posted by oscar

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

--You cannot make Linux filesystems from DOS.

Partition Magic, Partition Manager etc etc
all them run under DOS and of course they support linux

**oscar** · 10-07-2003, 05:51 PM

Originally Posted by Dave_Bechtel

(sigh) Yes, Ok technically you're right but everything from PM 7.0 on has to be started from Windoze, and is only capable of making Swap and ext2 filesystems for Linux AFAIK. I stuck with PM 7.01 personally for monetary reasons, and because I heard of people having problems with the latest ver.

Nothing to say about money...and emule...

Windoze is not necessary to boot partion magic or partition manager. The core part boot from a DOS floppy or may be run from real DOS HD. All versions. Look in "Make a recovery floppy" option or similar.
Actual versions for sure support ext3. I dont remenber now if reisefers is supported too. I´am not sure. They both are very usable. No problem yet.

regards