George Langford on Thu, 2 May 2002 16:30:12 +0200


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[PLUG] Re: Newbie's first question - chose to install HD temporarily


Hello fellow PLUGgers !

Somehow, this E-mail eluded posting to The List yestiddy:

OK; after many helpful suggestions as to how I might transfer data 
files from [two] soon-to-be-retired W9[5 & 8] PC's, I decided to
move the drives one at a time to the Linux box, configure them as
slaves (instead of the CDWriter) and then copy the data to the 40GB
drive in the Linux box.  I'm not yet ready to Samba with Suse ...

Physical installation was easy [so long as one doesn't have to put
the cover back on the Linux PC] and I learned that a simple reboot
from the Linux boot floppy would result in Linux autodetecting the
new IDE device just fine, including its partitions and their 
structures, which I wrote down.

The next step is a mystery - I cannot find any means of mounting
the new drive.  There is no hint of it in fstab, even after
rebooting with and without the boot floppy.  I tried looking at the 
files, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdb[1 thru 8], and so on, but I get nasty 
messages from the KDE file manager that suggest that Linux hasn't 
worked out which file system is which.  

However, I did find one webpage which gives a how-to for doing so.

It's at: http://www.linuxdot.org/cgi-bin/nlm.cgi?page=mount
where it says to edit the fstab file.

Original fstab [edited by removing extra spaces to fit your screen]:

/dev/hda7     /             ext3            defaults           1 1
/dev/hda5     /boot         ext3            defaults           1 2
none          /dev/pts      devpts          gid=5,mode=620     0 0
/dev/hda8     /home         ext3            defaults           1 2
none          /proc         proc            defaults           0 0
none          /dev/shm      tmpfs           defaults           0 0
/dev/hda1     /vol1         ext3            defaults           1 2
/dev/hda9     /vol2         ext3            defaults           1 2
/dev/hda6      swap         swap            defaults           0 0
/dev/fd0      /mnt/floppy   auto            noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

Here's what I suggest I add to that file:

/dev/hdb1     /?            FAT             ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb3     /?            FAT             ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb2     /?            FAT             ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb4     /?            Extended        ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb7     /?            ext 2           ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb6     /?            ext 2           ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb5     /?            linux swap      ?                  ? ?
/dev/hdb8     /?            FAT             ?                  ? ?

Note_1 ......./vol3, 4, 5, etc. 
Note_2 ..................................Whazzis..........   . ? ?
Note_3 ................................................What are these

Except that I'm mystified by the meaning of the ?'d entries. The ones
that I've filled in came from the results of Hardware Browser during
the Linux floppy boot-up.  I had to write them down longhand, as 
there are no available copy & paste features within reach then.

The above reference at linuxdot.org lists the entries thusly:

  ^            ^             ^              ^                  ^ ^
  ^            ^             ^              ^                  ^ ^
device    mount_point filesystem_type  mount_options        dump check

I'm guessing that I should use "vol3, vol4, vol5," etc. for the
mount_point entries, "defaults" for my mount_options entries, and 
"0 0" for the last two entries in each line.  I'm also guessing that 
I should create several new subdirectories under my /home/user0/ 
directory into which I can copy the data from vol's 3 through 8, 
not all of which have anything useful in them  [as the result of 
using Partition Magic and System Commander some time in the distant 
past in a semi-successful attempt to run multiple OS's].  Those 0 0's
at the end of each line of fstab are the most worrisome ...

Remembering that all's I want to do is rescue some [voluminous] data
and not put any MS product into the Linux PC, I'd like some advice 
on how to set up the visiting disk so it doesn't get altered and yet 
I can copy files and directory structure from it to the permanent 
hard drive in the Linux PC.  That "dump" entry sounds particularly 
ominous.  I sure don't want the intruding disk to get reformatted 
or erased !

I wuz kinda hoping that Linux would have the good grace to sense and
recognize the various partitions, their file systems, their sizes, 
and so on, and then to place that info in a file which could be 
translated automatically into a new fstab.  It seems to have done 
that admirably when I first tried the procedure with the CDWriter.  
What it did then was to add the appropriate lines to fstab without 
any intervention (read: blundering about) on my part.

Linux did half the job admirably by telling me all about my file 
systems on the visiting hard drive, but none of that information
has found its way into fstab or into the various /dev/hdb* files, 
none of which can yet be read by any of the available text editors.

The first time I attempted to post this, I asked:

> Oh yeah.  Who's kudzu ?  As in:
> /dev/fd0  /mnt/floppy    auto   noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0

But a later quick Google search (with the other PC) on "+linux 
+kudzu" answered my own dumb question ...

Thanks for your continuing patience & help.

Best regards,
George
amenex@amenex.com
http://www.amenex.com/
http://www.georgesbasement.com/

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