[OT] Re: Partitioning for ext3fs

Christian Kujau
Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:20:03 -0000

[please reply on-list, so that other ppl can help too]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006, david  cooke wrote:
> By hang, I mean the boot process will not go any further if I
> turn on the USB during boot. Whatever boot happens to be

Hm, too bad :(
But I'd suggest to discuss this issue on some FC forum, usb-list or even
linux-kernel.

>> I don't know if I understand you correctly: you've upgraded to
FC5 and
>> the external (USB? SATA?) drive still "does not work"?

> Typing fdisk /dev/sdc gives us
> Unable to open /dev/sdc

so, your OS (linux, FC) does not seem to be aware of your usb-disk
(sdc) or the driver crashed. try to check dmesg/messages for related
information and pass it on to one of the above mentioned lists.

> There is a light on in the USB so I think it's on...Yes, it is on.

That's good ;)

> Typing fdisk /dev/sda results in
> The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19457.
[...]

OK, so sda (sata disk?) is doing well. this is good ;)

> Now, I keep thinking this is my primary so don't to mess around here.
> Is this the USB?

typing "dmesg | grep sd" after booting should reveal which disk got
initialized with which "sdX" name.

> A different subject and we can cross that bridge later, but
> See above where the cylinders are set to nineteen thousand plus and not
> (I guess the usual) 1024? Can it be fixed?

This is what the help-messages above is in place:

"The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19457.
  There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
  and could in certain setups cause problems with:
  1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
  2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
    (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)"

So, why would you change anything? do you have DOS, OS/2 fdisk? do you
have old version of lilo? (FC uses GRUB anyway, IIRC).

greetings,
Christian.
--
BOFH excuse #115:

your keyboard's space bar is generating spurious keycodes.