Troubles with Partitions
David W. Summers
Well earlier yesterday and today I was banging right along with Linux.
I was able to tell Linux to boot from the hard disk and mount the root from
the hard disk (/dev/hd1). I used ShoeLace to do this.
THEN I tried to activate swapping on /dev/hd2. No joy. mkswap told me I
couldn't use the second partition because it was a DOS extended partition.
So, I proceded to try to change the partition type with 'edpart', which
seemed to work, until I tried to re-boot using the hard disk. NO JOY!
It now would not boot! Fortunately I had a bootable rootable floppy, which
I then proceeded to boot from. When I then ran 'fdisk', it said that
/dev/hd3 and /dev/hd4 were my partitions instead of /dev/hd1 and /dev/hd2!!!!
"Well", I says to myself, "I can live with that.", so I proceeded to install
ShoeLace to use /dev/hd3 as the root. No Joy. Upon booting /dev/hd3, it
comes up and says that I still am trying to use /dev/hd1 after I've already
told it I want /dev/hd3! Pretty wierd, eh kiddies?
So, unless someone has any ideas, I'll just have to run without Swapping
enabled until I or someone else figures out how to get mkswap to accept
a DOS 5 or DOS 3.3 extended partition!
Any ideas?
Thanks!
- David Summers
(d...@engr.uark.edu)
--
"Never under-estimate the bandwidth of a station-wagon
David Summers full of tapes, hurtling down the highway."
d...@engr.uark.edu - Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks"
Steven L. Johnson
>"Well", I says to myself, "I can live with that.", so I proceeded to install
>ShoeLace to use /dev/hd3 as the root. No Joy. Upon booting /dev/hd3, it
>comes up and says that I still am trying to use /dev/hd1 after I've already
>told it I want /dev/hd3! Pretty wierd, eh kiddies?
There is no real consensus on whether partition #1 is the first
partition on the disk, or is the first entry in the partition
table. Some parition programs sort this information on the
screen only, some will write the sorted information back to the
hard disk. Linux assumes that the first entry is hd1, and so
if some utility starts sorting/reordering the table these things
can change.
A useful hack is to make each of your partitions a different size.
Then after any editting or possible change to the partition table
you can boot a floppy system and run fdisk (linux's, not DOS) to
see if the assignments still hold.
>So, unless someone has any ideas, I'll just have to run without Swapping
>enabled until I or someone else figures out how to get mkswap to accept
>a DOS 5 or DOS 3.3 extended partition!
The 16 bit FAT DOS(4) Extension selection in edpart is acceptable
to linux for both the regular file system partitions and swap space.
These are not the same as the extended dos partitions that can
contain multiple logical volumes which linux objects to.
At least it works for me.
-Steve
Peter Cooper
>Hello NetLanders,
> Well earlier yesterday and today I was banging right along with Linux.
>I was able to tell Linux to boot from the hard disk and mount the root from
>the hard disk (/dev/hd1). I used ShoeLace to do this.
>THEN I tried to activate swapping on /dev/hd2. No joy. mkswap told me I
>couldn't use the second partition because it was a DOS extended partition.
>So, I proceded to try to change the partition type with 'edpart', which
>seemed to work, until I tried to re-boot using the hard disk. NO JOY!
>It now would not boot! Fortunately I had a bootable rootable floppy, which
>I then proceeded to boot from. When I then ran 'fdisk', it said that
>/dev/hd3 and /dev/hd4 were my partitions instead of /dev/hd1 and /dev/hd2!!!!
>"Well", I says to myself, "I can live with that.", so I proceeded to install
>ShoeLace to use /dev/hd3 as the root. No Joy. Upon booting /dev/hd3, it
>comes up and says that I still am trying to use /dev/hd1 after I've already
>told it I want /dev/hd3! Pretty wierd, eh kiddies?
Shoelace has a bug in it. As far as I am aware, it will not be possible
to use shoelace to boot a kernel that does swapping (something to do
with the fact that shoelace overwrites the wrong bytes in the bootsector
when loading. If you want to grab the shoelace sources, I am informed
that it is a fairly easy bug to fix. )
