Re: Partition table still leaves me confused.

[Mark Knecht <markknecht attbi com>]

On Sat, 2003-05-31 at 11:39, Albert DE WINT wrote:

> I exclusively use RED HAT.
> A few days ago I lost XP, (so what)
> 
> > (I think so.) What's currently in your /etc/fstab File? I'll bet you
> > mounted /dev/hda6 on /mnt/Mandrake using an 'auto' parameter which
> > mounted it upon booting. I believe I suggest this yesterday.
> > 
> > Send a copy of /etc/fstab as it currently is.
> 
> [root DIMENSION etc]# cat fstab
> LABEL=/      /                ext3    defaults        1 1
> LABEL=/boot  /boot            ext3    defaults        1 2
> none         /dev/pts         devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> none         /proc            proc    defaults        0 0
> none         /dev/shm         tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> /dev/hda4    swap             swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/hda7    swap             swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/cdrom   /mnt/cdrom       udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> /dev/cdrom1  /mnt/cdrom1      udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> /dev/fd0     /mnt/floppy      auto   noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0


This looks good and is helpful.

> > > 
> > >    Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120000000000 bytes	
> > >    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14589 cylinders	
> > >    Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> > > 
> > >    Device	  boot Start   End    Blocks   Id  System
> > >   /dev/hda1       9151  4589  43688767+   f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
> > >   /dev/hda2          1  3616  29045488+  17  Hidden HPFS/NTFS
> > >   /dev/hda3   *   3745  9150  43423695   83  Linux
> > >   /dev/hda4       3617  3744   1028160   82  Linux swap
> > >   /dev/hda5       9151  9163    104391   83  Linux
> > >   /dev/hda6       9164 14459  42540088+  83  Linux
> > >   /dev/hda7      14460 14589   1044193+  82  Linux swap
> > > 
> .
> 
> I'll tell you the complete history, for clarity's sake.
> 
> Before I had mandre Mandrake, I had two partitions only: one for DOS,
> one for NTFS (taking all the disk's space: 120GB)
> 
> So I schrinked the NTFS and added one EXT2 partition for Mandrake and
> one swap partition. (using PartitionMagic)
>
> Then I installed Mandrake.  (Nasty experience, lots of trouble; had to
> start over a couple of times)
> 
> So when I was about to install REDHAT, 4 primary partitions had been
> taken.(1 DOS, 1 NTFS, 1 EXT2, 1SWAP)
> 
> I decided to remove the first DOS partition to make room for REDHAT. 
> (it contained DELL utilities, I guess)

OK, so I had it backwards. It looks like, from you story and fstab
above, that Redhat has 3 partitions (root, /boot and swap) inside of the
extended partition and Mandrake has two primary partitions since it was
install first. 

Also, since Redhat mounted with labels (see fstab above) instead of disk
partition numbers it's impossible for me to tell which partitions Redhat
is using, but we can figure that out.

It would be best if you did a reboot. This will remove any mounts you've
done by hand. Log in and execute df -T. That will tell use which
partitions Redhat is mounting. I would expect that we'll see hda4 & 7
mounted as swap. We'll also probably see hda5 & 6 mounted as / and
/boot. These are Redhat, and are covered by the first two lines of your
fstab, I think. (Again, guessing because of the use of labels.)

ALSO - We are going to need a few mount points to look around a bit.
make some mount points under /mnt, named as you see fit. I'd suggest
just making them with sort of obvious test names matching the disk
drives you want to look at. Since we're trying to mount Mandrake on
hda3, do it like this:

su -
mkdir /mnt/hda3

I'm assuming that Mandrake, as per your story is on hda3 and hda4 is
Mandrake's swap partition. When these are made, and after the reboot I
suggested above, we would then try mounting the Mandrake partitions
under Redhat:

mount -t ext3 /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3

(It appears to me that Mandrake has only a single partition.)

If the mount goes well, then do an ls and lets see what shows up:

ls /mnt/hda3

I bet your see the same sort of thing that Redhat will be showing you at
the root of your current setup:

ls /

I think it best to stop here as my wife wants me to put up a ceiling
fan. (If you never hear from me again, I died doing this task!) ;-)

Let me know how it goes.

- Mark


> 
> If I'm correct, it should be 2.4.19-16 (I found that in my notes on good
> old paper)

We'll need to look in Mandrake's boot directory for the real name:

ls -al /mnt/hda3/boot



> > 4) Mandrake /etc/fstab

If the mount went well, it will be in /mnt/hda3/etc

more /mnt/hda3/etc/fstab

> 
> I'm afraid that's beyond my reach.
>