new partition on external drive - permissions: root drwxr-xr-x

English Install/Boot/Login
21

Thanks again for the elaborate explanation!

I had labeled the ext3-partition with Yast>Partitioner. Maybe not an ideal idea but as long as I get no funny things again I will leave it so (seems to have a special place now in /media/choosenlabel). Next time I use e2label, I promise!

“2) remove everything in /media,” seems to me difficult in the text-modus (maybe I should make an user a sudoer or use gnomesu nautilus the next time). I deleted the complete directory and logged in as a Gnome user. After no new appeared under Gnome I logged out again and mad an new empty one. Now it seems to work.

The second partition is in fat so it has no label. Hope it comes back to /media/disk even if I plug in an other FAT partition at an other time. Can I name it under Windows or make something with the fstab?

I am planning to make a new installation of openSUSE 11.2 instead of my old (and being played with to many times?) 11.1. I hope I will tread that new installation well so it will be able to tread me well, too :wink:

A good night
pistazienfresser

22

You will still need a /media directory since this is where hot plugged devices show up.

23

Labeling the fs with YaST is the same as using e2label. Don’t worry. you can also use tune2fs -L.

I do not see that emptying* /media* can be a problem. But first there must be the need to do so. Did it contain the disk-1 … disk-50 directories while all removables are unmounted or not?

I also suppose you know how to do these things as root. I have to assume some starting points. After all, somewhere in the thread there is a link to “How to login as root”. And as with the other link, as long as you have no direct questions on its contents, I assume that you studied it, understood it and maybe even tested it. I also assume you know how to use man pages. I also assume you know that you remove with the rm and rmdir commands and that you know how ro use wildcards.

In any case, as gogalthorp allready said, when I advise you to** remove the contents** of /media, you should NOT remove* /media* itself. When doing these sorts of loose implementations of our advice you may cripple your system.

I suppose you can label a FAT fs under windows, but I have no Windows knowledge at all, so I can not advise you on this.

New install? then go for 11.2. Doing new installs all the time is more a windows way of life. Normaly, when one treats the system well, a re-install is never needed.

24

Mea culpa, …!
After reading the contents of the man rm and man rmdir pages and a old Linux book for half an hour and not understanding how to empty a directory (and not wanting to delete 50+ files each by each) I lost my patience and just removed the hole directory. As I just wanted make an Update by New installing and I had no disk plugged in as I deleted the directory or as was running GNOME I did not think it as a risk. Maybe I was wrong.

Can someone tell me a short/easy command to delete only the content of a directory? (“that you know how ro use wildcards” - no i did not, but I will try to get an understanding).

And maybe my System 11.1 was just crippled by playing to much try and error :X so the new installation was just a good thing because of the user. The Update from 11.0 to 11.2 via Update and DVD on an other (old) Laptop/Notebook was not a success so I did a Upgrade by new installation there before this, too. The new installation was also appowed to me in this post: 11.1 to 11.2 - Update or New Installation with intel 915 graphic? - openSUSE Forums (because of ext4)

Thanks for your advices and for your patience
pistazienfresser

25

Read on “wildcards” in the man page of bash under the heading Pathname expansion.

Now I will give below examples with the command* ls*, but you can use any command including rm. This is a precaution because, believe it or not, people have copied statements from here to their system without asking themselves what they are for or looking up what they do in the man pages. And then we are made guilty :stuck_out_tongue:

In short, of the features described there people most use:

  • for 'any number of any characters;
    ? for ‘any character’.
    Thus when you do
ls a*

you get the data of all files (in the present working direrctory) starting with the character* a*. And

ls *

will give all (which is by incident the default action of ls, but not of rm.
Take care that in those circumstances where filenames starting with a . (dot) are not listed (hidden), you have to mention explicitly

ls .*

to get them, or if you want all of them all

ls * .*

Usefull may be something like

ls *.jpeg *.jpg *.JPG

giving you files which probably contain JPEG pictures.

And

ls a?c

will give you abc but also aac, a1c (if these exist).

For such an destructive act as removing a lot of files, I would ALWAYS do

ls *

to see what would happen when I replace the command ls with rm -rf. Be always carefull!

It is important that you understand that the SHELL (bash in our case) does the expansion. Thus when we have only files a, b and c and do

cat *

the shell will make first

cat a b c

out of this and then call the cat program with three parameters. All this expanding is unknow to the cat command.
Hope this helps bit to start further study and experimenting.

26

And from our lectures back to your problem.

Do I understand correct that there were really disk, disk-1 … diisk-50. Please do not be ashamed, but did you remove the devices everytime without unmounting first? I can not understand how this can happen otherwise.

Removing without proper unmounting can not only destroy the file system (think what would happen if the write cash is still not emptied to the device). But also even your file system label will then be occupied and you will have <your-label>, <your-label>-1, etc, in due time.

27

Thanks for teaching.

Yes, this had been so before I did the deleting. I think the last one was disk 52 :X

Not at all!

I am not able to recall exactly what I did the last year/years while I was using and updating this old system, sorry. But I think I unmounted the external partitions (on the desktop or in nautilus) before plugging the USB-stick or the external HD out before plugging the device out while the computer and linux was running.

Maybe I was just using some DOS-/FAT- partitions in turn?

Should I also unmount an external patition before I plug it out if I had shut down my system before unplugging? Or does linux / root / HAL do this automatically?
*
Maybe it has to do something with save to disk and GRUB starting Windows by default? Is the the option for GRUB to start the same system as before without me acting? *

Thanks for this side SDB:Mount a DOS partition with all permissions for users - openSUSE : (Is the titel of this page spelled correctly or is there something wrong with the "_"s ? see:All pages with prefix SDB:Mount- openSUSE )

Thanks a lot
pistazienfresser

P. S.: To Fstab - openSUSE - “How to edit” : Would mention be wise of (1.) the editing itself and (0.) doing before editing this file.

28

When you shutdown your system iin a proper way (that is not just switching off power) unmounting is done. That is one of the reasons a proper shutdow should be done.

Suspend to disk/memory is not a proper shutdown. That is by design of course. If you could shutdown/boot in the same amount of time as suspending, there would be no need for suspend. And it means that not all things done for a shutdown are done because the system will be started where it was. And when you then remove half the hardware when it is unconsious …

I do not understand your concern about the _. I see no _ either in the HTML title of the page, nor in the title as seen by the reader of the rendered page. I only see _ in the URL and that is of no concern, the URL could also have been made SDB:MaDpwapfu-o or whatever.

29

Hope you do not think I make things like this by purpose.
The laptop goes on suspend to disk to save energy (or at fist after installing 11.2 just as I plugged the power cable of to be mobile: Unwanted action as power plugged in or out (hibernate, …) - openSUSE Forums).
If I would make openSuse the default operating system I would have difficulties in Windows XP (which needs restarting more often than openSuse) - I could say something about the choosing between skylla and charybdis but I want not to provoke someone (openSuse linux seems to me like none of them) :wink:

Greetings
pistazienfresser

30

Le 26/04/2010 12:06, pistazienfresser a écrit :

> Hope you do not think I make things like this by purpose.
> The laptop goes on suspend to disk to save energy

well, you have to unmount (reove safely) any usb device before this (I
beg than you have to remove them to get mobile)

jdd

31

I am only explaining why it works as it works.

I never have difficulties with Windows XP. It is simply not on my systems. rotfl!

32

So I changed the “Power Management Preferences”> (again):
“On Battery Power”
“When battery power is critically low:” “Suspend”
“[x] Spin down hard disks when possible”

“On AC Power”

The Linux-system is now default system in GRUB (for log in automatically).

Hope now there will be less problems in openSuSE (but I should take a look at my laptop’s power preferences in Windows XP).

Maybe I try to deactivate the automatic boot in GRUB or at least set the time for automatic boot up (100 years?).

Greetings
pistazienfresser