SD Card not getting partitioned with openSUSE 11.0

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have a brand new 4GB SD Card from Sandisk, and I am trying to partition & configure this (for using with Pandaboard and minimalfs), with commands detailed here:

PandaBoard Minimal-FS SD Configuration - OMAPpedia.

My configuration is openSUSE 11.0 (i586) & I am connecting a USB based card reader.

I could never partition the SD Card. I do not get an error with any of the commands. I tried running partprobe as well as a system reboot, but nothing helped.

My output is copied here

pastebin.pandaboard.org

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

2

I did not read all the links you gave me, but I get the idea that they try to give you some predefined scripts, that most logical will not fit your needs.
I do not have such a device, but as I understand it, to the system it is just a disk. And the fact that they use fdisk in their scripts confirms this.
Thus when you want to partition it and create file systems on it and tell the system on which mountpoint to mount them, why do you not use YaST > System > System partitioning, which is the GUI tool openSUSE provides you for these tasks? Or, when you have a bit more knowledge and want to do all the steps by userself in the CLI, why do you not use fdisk and mkfs and vi to change /etc/fstab?

And at least, as with every partitioning question posted here, you should post the output of

fdisk -l

(and of course between CODE tags: Posting in Code Tags - A Guide).

P.S. I see this is your first post on these forums. Welcome here!

3

I now see hat you started allready using fdisk (I hate reading those links on pastebins, they want to store cookies and have more bad things, for computer text this is not needed, use CODE tags as mentioned above).

When usinng fdisk and it says there is no partition table at all, then the command

   o   create a new empty DOS partition table

seems a suitable point to start imho. And from there create partitions to your whish using

   n   add a new partition

and check what you have with

   p   print the partition table

when satisfied use

   w   write table to disk and exit

and ready.

4

Thanks for looking in to this. I gave a try as you suggested, but no luck yet. I just got someone to try this on a Redhat, but he reported the same problem. Wondering if it has to do with the SD Card? But it is a new one from Sandisk. It appears like the partition table is not valid or not getting created.

I tried to generate some more statistics, if it can help diagnose: #2072012 - Pastie](http://www.pastie.org/2072012)

linux-68ge:~ # fdisk /dev/sde
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xff2c7062.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won’t be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): o
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x0f7a8580.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won’t be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sde: 4041 MB, 4041211904 bytes
125 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1018 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7750 * 512 = 3968000 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0f7a8580

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
linux-68ge:~ # partprobe
linux-68ge:~ # mount -t ext3 /dev/sde /tmp/mmc
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sde,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

linux-68ge:~ # dmesg | tail
sd 7:0:0:2: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
sde: unknown partition table
sd 7:0:0:2: [sde] 7892992 512-byte hardware sectors (4041 MB)
sd 7:0:0:2: [sde] Write Protect is off
sd 7:0:0:2: [sde] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 7:0:0:2: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
sde: unknown partition table
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
end_request: I/O error, dev fd0, sector 0
VFS: Can’t find ext3 filesystem on dev sde.
linux-68ge:~ #

5

On 2011-06-15 14:36, newpanda wrote:
> Command (m for help): w
> The partition table has been altered!
>
> Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
> Syncing disks.

Here remove the disk, insert, and print partition table.
Look at dmesg, too.

> linux-68ge:~ # partprobe
> linux-68ge:~ # mount -t ext3 /dev/sde /tmp/mmc

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)

6

I can not quite follow what you are doing, but first and foremost I asked you to post computer output between CODE tags. This I get a headache from.

I can follow more or less what you did with *fdisk. *You created an empty partition table with the o command (but fdisk allready told you it did the same just before you repeated this), then used the p command to check this and it did:

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sde: 4041 MB, 4041211904 bytes
125 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1018 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7750 * 512 = 3968000 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0f7a8580

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Then you used the write command to wrtite it to disk, which it did (I presume, why not).

Now what follows I can not understand. I do not know what partprobe does, but next you are going to

mount -t ext3 /dev/sde /tmp/mmc

But you have no file system on /dev/sde, you just have an empty partition table!

I guess you lack some knowledge about what you try to do (forgive me if I am wrong). I advise you to read and understand SDB:Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points - openSUSE

Also when you want to use the whole of */dev/sde *for a file system, why partition it? Partitioning is only needed when you want to split up (partition) your disk in several parts. You can still split it into one part (which wiill then be known as /dev/sde1), but that is not needed.

Having the whole disk, or a partition, then most of the time (but not allways) one wants to use this as a file system. Then that file system must be created using a form of mkfs.

When you have a file system, then and only then, you can mount this on a directory (that must exist) of your choice and that directory is called a mount point.

Why, if you lack the knowledge of doing this in the CLI, don’t you use YaST as I suggested earlier. It is there to take care of people for which doing this is not a routine task.

Maybe you should forget a bit about all the information you found in all sorts of places on the internet. You asked here and we are trying to help you. But when you intermingle executing our advice with all sorts of other things you don’t realy understand in the middle of our help sequence, we can not guarantee that we understand what you are doing.

7

Thanks.

I am indeed a newbie and I am not very good at writing emails in open source Forums (yet). Apologies if I was not clear.

However, I intended to mention only some statistics for diagnosis - so here is what I tried to assert:

I tried with O option as you mentioned earlier, and retried all the steps, including partition creations, but since there was nothing new in the output, I didnt copy that part here.

By the other commands, here is what I meant.

  • tried partprobe ( man page - partprobe is a program that informs the operating system kernel of partition table changes, by requesting that the operating sys‐tem re-read the partition table.)
  • tried generate info more info with dmesg | tail by executing mount before - such as:: Write Protect is off & sde: unknown partition table.

The pandaboard has ARM that supports SD boot. So I believe I need to do this as mentioned in their docs: 1 boot partition of 64Meg and the rest a linux partition.

I will read the link you mentioned. Thanks for the patience.

##############################################

@robin_listas - I tried that too, but didnt help. Thanks

8

Then at least postthe output of

fdisk -l

so that we can see what you have now. Saying "including partition creations, " does tell extto nthing. At least tell us what partitioniung you want to create. So that we can help you step by step. You intentions are not clear and what you are doing is not clear. I am not at least interested in “some statistics for diagnosis”. I want facts.
. What do you want to achieve.
. What do you have now (no story, but fdisk -l).
Then we can go step by step.

And you still did not explain why you do not simply use TaST. When I ask questions, I like it to get an answer or a question from you when I am not clear or anything, but no ingnoration.