Partitioning question

Beartooth Sciurivore beartooth at swva.net
Wed Jun 18 18:45:20 UTC 2008


On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:52:07 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:

> Beartooth Sciurivore wrote:

>> 	Both show /dev/sda1 with 196 MB, labelled /boot -- and /dev/sda2
>> (all the rest, 74 GB) with an unknown file system! Gparted offers a
>> warning about that.
>> 
>> 	Last time I saw a partition with an unknown file system on one of
>> my machines, I was told the hard drive must be failing, or about to
>> fail. Is that so now??
>> 
>> 	Or have I messed up my upgrade from F8? Or what?
>> 
>> 	What should I do??
>> 
> By default, F8 uses LVM to manage the file systems. A LVM partition will
> show up as an unknown file system to a lot of utilities. /boot can not 
> be
> on a LVM partition because Grub does not know how to handle them. (Not
> 100% true - there are ways to use Grub without it being able to read the
> file system.) You have to use the LVM utilities to manage file systems
> in the LVM partition. On F8 in Gnome it is System --> Administration -->
> Logical Volume Management.

	Now I'm really confused. Gparted actually shows *four* 
partitions, if you look in the right place. But we can ignore /dev/sdb, 
which is a second drive with <shudder> XP, for such times as I need to 
make a GPS talk to topo map software -- something no emulator I've looked 
at lately can yet do.

	So, of the three partitions relevant to Fedora (9, not 8, btw), 
one is LVM, one is boot, and one -- far and away the biggest -- has a 
file system gparted doesn't know, or none. And if it does have one, 
qtparted (which can even recognize M$) doesn't know about it either.


/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 also has a warning, though not the same 
one; /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01 (with 1.87 GB)has no warning, but is 
labelled swap. 

	So it still looks to me as if I'm coasting toward crash, with 
only 196 MB of usable space, and over 74 GB inaccessible. But that can't 
be right, either, because then all of F9 would fit on one CD...

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Not Quite Clueless Power User
Remember I know little (precious little!) of where up is.





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