Mount Partitions

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello to all in the forums I am a new Suse user and this is my first post so if i’m in the wrong place let me know

I am now dual booting Ubuntu 8.04 and open suse 11.
In my PC there are 3 sata hard drives 250GB has open suse 500 GB has ubuntu and the 400GB is now blank (blew away vista and fedora 9) My problem is that I wish to use the 400GB drive for storage in both oses. I have set up 2 Partitions 250 for suse 150 for ubuntu. Suse cannot see the parttion(s) and when I try to set up a mount point I get a 3003 error (parttioner is trying to mount my swap space)

btw none of the other drives show up in my fstab

Can this be done?

DJ1120

P.S. I am liking what I see so far in Suse 11 this is my 2nd attempt using it and it seems better than the last release

2

Can you post:

(1) output of typing in a gnome-terminal/konsole: su -c ‘fdisk -l’ #enter root password when prompted

(2) output of typing in a gnome-terminal/konsole: df -h

(3) output of typing in a nome-terminal/konsole: cat /etc/fstab

Those could prove to be quite big, so you could copy and paste them to a paste bin site such as general pastebin - simplified internet collaboration , submit them, and then post the provided URL here.

3

Just to confirm

Does it not showing up in yast2-system-partitioner?

4

It shows up in the Yast Partitioner with no mount point when I try to give it a mount point of /local using parttion I get the error mount -t ext3 .dev/sdb2 swap mount point does not exist

5

Thanks for that link! Here is a link to the output of those commands

general pastebin - Mount Parttions - post number 1170916

DJ1120

6

Here is a link to a screen shot of my partition(s) hope this helps

Screenshot-4.png

DJ1120

7

Are sure the partitions are formatted in ext3
Please check

8

You made a syntax error when you typed the “su -c fdisk -l”

#Here is my output

#Usage: fdisk -l] -b SSZ] -u] device
#E.g.: fdisk /dev/hda (for the first IDE disk)

or: fdisk /dev/sdc (for the third SCSI disk)

or: fdisk /dev/eda (for the first PS/2 ESDI drive)

or: fdisk /dev/rd/c0d0 or: fdisk /dev/ida/c0d0 (for RAID devices)

…

please note that is a small “L” and not a “one”. So please try that again. It will list all your detectable partitions. Copy and paste this to a konsole / gnome-terminal:
su -c ‘fdisk -l’

9

Ok.

OK, openSUSE has sda, and Ubuntu sdb.

It appears your old Vista and Fedora were on what is now called sdc.

From what I can deduce, your hard drive consists of:

sda1 20GB / (openSUSE root)
**sda2 212.8 GB /home ** (openSUSE home)

**sdb1 18.6 GB / ** (Ubuntu-8.04 root - a guess on my part)
**sdb2 235.3 MB swap ** (openSUSE swap)
**sdb3 956.9 MB swap ** (Ubuntu swap)
**sdb4 445.9 GB /home ** (Ubuntu-8.0.4 home - a guess on my part)

sdc1 244.1 GB ?
sdc2 128.4 GB ?
As conram noted, we need to know the format of these Linux partitions.

Since I am the only Linux user on my PC, I never mount a Linux drive under root (ie under / ) , but instead I mount such drives in a subdirectory under my /home/oldcpu partition.

Note with Linux partitions, sometimes you can get away without specifying the format with the mount command (it can be autodetected on occasion). Hence you could create some directories under:
/home/yourusername/ubunturoot
/home/yourusername/ubuntuhome
/home/yourusername/data244
/home/yourusername/data128

Then after creating those directories, to test if you can mount these drives, try:
su #enter root password when prompted
mount /dev/sdb1 /home/yourusername/ubunturoot
mount /dev/sdb4 /home/yourusername/ubuntuhome
mount /dev/sdc1 /home/yourusername/data244
mount /dev/sdc2 /home/yourusername/data128

Be very careful with /dev/sdb1, … do NOT write anything there as if it is your Ubuntu root, you could easily trash it.

After the test is complete, unmount them all with:
su #enter root password when prompted
umount /dev/sdb1
umount /dev/sdb4
umount /dev/sdc1
umount /dev/sdc2

If that works, and also if you have sorted the format you are using, we can recommend an fstab modification. When that time comes, my recommendation is to mount /dev/sdb1 as READ-ONLY to avoid the risk of trashing your ubuntu.

10

here is my second try

general pastebin - mounting partitons - post number 1171279

11

Thanks. That was a bit surprising, in that sdc1 did not show up!! :open_mouth:

#Disk /dev/sdc: 400.0 GB, 400088457216 bytes
#255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
#Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
#Disk identifier: 0x09893070
#
 
#   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
#/dev/sdc2           31872       48641   134705025   83  Linux

My guess now is that:
/dev/sdc1 is your old Vista and that
/dev/sdc2 is your old fedora-9.

But I do not understand why /dev/sdc1 is not showing up. Is there any chance you did a cut-and-paste error ?

I am thinking now that my proposed command:

mount /dev/sdc1 /home/yourusername/data244

will not work!!

12

On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:06:03 GMT
oldcpu <oldcpu@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

> #Disk /dev/sdc: 400.0 GB, 400088457216 bytes
> #255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 48641 cylinders
> #Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> #Disk identifier: 0x09893070
> #
>
> # Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> #/dev/sdc2 31872 48641 134705025 83 Linux
> --------------------
>
> But I do not understand why /dev/sdc1 is not showing up. Is there any
> chance you did a cut-and-paste error ?

It’s quite possible to create partitions in any of the four ‘slots’ using
linux or a decent partitioner. Windows/Microsoft just uses the ‘next
available’ slot… making it seem like they are always filled from 1 to 4.

Called primary partitions, There are 4 memory areas in the MBR/Partition
table which hold the information for partitions. Since the bootstrap routine
is in the MBR too, there isn’t room for the extended partition information
and it’s installed elsewhere.

Also possible to install something in partition 1, then partition 2, and then
delete partition 1. You can see that /dev/sdc2 starts 31872 cylinders in…
presumably from a previous 250Gb partition which existed previously.

Loni

–
L R Nix
lornix@lornix.com

13

Ok I was able to mount the partitions using the command given above. All my drives are formated as ext3. So how can I add them to fstab?

dj1120

14

As soon as you are able to mount the partitions it should be now added to your fstab if it is not may be you have to reestart x or reboot.

Some good fellows in the old forum did a good job in tutoring me with mounting a partition:)
Adding A Partition To Suse - openSUSE Forums

15

The first thing you should do is backup your old fstab.

I suggest a new fstab something like this:
general pastebin - sample fstab - post number 1172547

Note you need to remove the line numbers. Thats an artifact of pastebin. And you need to change “yourusername” to your user name. And specify the exact mount points you wish to use, … I simply used the same ones (such as /home/yourusername/data128 ) from the above example.

Also note, I don’t think your /dev/sdc1 is formated yet? Hence I did not try to mount it.

If you wish, you can create an fstab based on the above URL suggestion, but before you save it as an fstab, you can post it here, and one of us on the forum can do a quality check (visual inspection) of it.

Alternatively, you can do this all in YaST.

Note that I put “ro” for the Ubuntu root partition. IMHO its not a good idea to have write permissions to that partition from openSUSE, … read should be sufficient (from openSUSE). If necessary, you can always remove the “ro” later.

Also note, you need to reboot for the above to work.

Don’t mess this up. :slight_smile: … If you do, you will not be able to boot from your hard drives.

16

Bear in mind that word of caution before you do your next move
But sometimes it helps to learn from mistakes like the signature below specified.:slight_smile:

17

I formatted over sdc1 (trying to see if re-creating the partition would work) I am going to rebuild that partition using Gparted. I was able to mount the 128 GB Partition so I am fairly sure I can mount the 250 GB one once I create it

18

Thanks everyone for your help

Well I messed it up so I just formated the drives and re-installed both oses (ububtu on the 500GB drive and suse on the 400 GB drive) I have an external drive with my important files so blowing up my install is not a major problem. BTW will this work for an esata drive? I can mount it in ubuntu but not suse

19

Just a note:
You can’t create a partition with more than three primaries beacuase you will not be allowed to add more. Make three primary partitions and the next will be all extended partitions.