My laptop has a 16gb microSSD. Initially, this was used as an “acceleration cache” for my windows partition, but I have since disabled that feature and made it simply an ext4 partition that automounts to /media/ssd. However, it occurred to me that if I made it ntfs instead of ext4, then I could use it to share files with my windows partition. I set out to do that, but I ran into a problem–I couldn’t boot into openSUSE anymore!
I’ll start at the beginning, with when I had my microSSD as just ext4 and automounted to /media/ssd. Back then, the pertinent line from my fstab was as follows.
LABEL=ssd /media/ssd ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 2
So then I went to gparted, created a new partition table for /dev/sdb (which is the microSSD), and then I created the whole microSSD as a single ntfs partition. Following that, I changed the “ext4” part of the above fstab line to ntfs.
But then when I booted into openSUSE, it just hung…
So then I booted from a liveDVD and changed the “ntfs” part of the fstab line to “ntfs-3g”, thinking that might help. But that didn’t change anything.
So then I just booted back into that liveDVD and changed things back to the way they were in order to get my system back–reformatted the microSSD to ext4, and changed the fstab line back to the original that I quoted above. Then the system was back to normal. (phew!–didn’t break anything permanently!)
So… how DO I make my microSSD into ntfs without running into the problems I encountered??
Thanks!
(edit–thought that I should clarify that my microSSD does not have anything on it. So yeah, I don’t care about needing to reformat it.)
If it were me, I would remove all reference to it in the fstab. My suspicion is you missed an fstab reference to that SSD (how about posting the content of your entire fstab) ?
Then after the reference to the SSD is removed completely, do a reboot to confirm your PC boots okay to openSUSE.
Then use the YaST partitioner to format the SSD and let YaST partitioner do the fstab edits/mounting for the SSD.
If that does not work with YaST, then asuming a supported openSUSE version you could write a bug report and obtain the develop/packagers support on this.
AFAIK the YaST partitioner can’t create a new ntfs partition. If I followed this story correctly, the SSD is now back at ext4 in order to get openSUSE working. So he has to reformat the disk back to NTFS using Windows at first. For setting the mountpoint afterwards however I fully agree to your method using the YaST partitioner prior to editing /etc/fstab manually.
On 2014-01-27 13:26, oldcpu wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2619662 Wrote:
>>
>> I think we need also the output of “blkid” to find out what each device
>> is.
>>
>
> blkid can be difficult to read, albeit I agree useful to see if the /s
> is also the SSD.
>
> Also possibly something readable like the following may help provide the
> information ?
>
> Code:
> --------------------
>
> lsblk --fs
>
> --------------------
Yes, that’s a nice command.
I don’t see in either command how to display the “id” :-? Only the “uuid”.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Sorry for not realizing that that may be confusing. /s is my home partition. I do have such a directory as /home/rybnik but I don’t manually put anything in there because I like keeping my own files separate from config files, which automatically get shoved within /home/rybnik. Also, this way I can automount my home partition to multiple OS’s with each OS still having its own config files.
Okay, then.
Correct.
I had already tried this previously, and subsequently opensuse wouldn’t boot, even after using a live system to edit the fstab line to ntfs.
Ah, so now I see. So I should do the following, yes?
(1) reformat SSD to ntfs in Windows.
(2) boot into live system of opensuse, use yast partitioner to set mountpoint
(3) edit fstab (if need be)
The following is the output of lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 1000M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 260M 0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3 8:3 0 128M 0 part
├─sda4 8:4 0 195G 0 part /media/windows
├─sda5 8:5 0 350M 0 part
├─sda6 8:6 0 12.9G 0 part
├─sda7 8:7 0 16.6G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda8 8:8 0 500G 0 part /s
└─sda9 8:9 0 35.2G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 14.9G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 14.9G 0 part /media/ssd
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
On 2014-02-01 12:46, rybnik wrote:
>
> oldcpu Wrote:
>> AFAIK the YaST partitioner can’t create a new ntfs partition.
> Okay, then.
There is an “mkfs.ntfs”, though. And gparted claims to be able to format
to ntfs. How happy is Windows about that, I have no idea.
>> So he has to reformat the disk back to NTFS using Windows at first.
> I had already tried this previously, and subsequently opensuse wouldn’t
> boot, even after using a live system to edit the fstab line to ntfs.
Maybe mkinitrd had to be run :-?
>
> s_blum Wrote:
>> For setting the mountpoint afterwards however I fully agree to your
>> method using the YaST partitioner prior to editing /etc/fstab manually.
> Ah, so now I see. So I should do the following, yes?
>
> (1) reformat SSD to ntfs in Windows.
> (2) boot into live system of opensuse, use yast partitioner to set
> mountpoint
> (3) edit fstab (if need be)
And perhaps run mkinitrd
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Yes, this is what i had in mind. By the way: If Linux refuses to boot with a mountpoint still set, why not just remove the reference in /etc/fstab using your live system. Afterwards, it should work fine and you can use the yast partitioner. If you already tried: Did it work? I’m curious
>
> Yes, this is what i had in mind. By the way: If Linux refuses to boot
> with a mountpoint still set, why not just remove the reference in
> /etc/fstab using your live system. Afterwards, it should work fine and
> you can use the yast partitioner. If you already tried: Did it work? I’m
> curious
Yes, but remember that initrd has a copy of fstab inside. Or part of it.
It should only affect those mounts needed for booting, like “/usr” if it
exists. Or “/” itself, of course. A data partition should be irrelevant.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
Based on the advice I received here, I went ahead and did the following.
(1) removed the reference to the ssd in my fstab (from my regular openSUSE install, not from a live system)
(2) shut down and then booted into windows
(3) used the windows partitioner to reformat the ssd to ntfs
(4) shut down and then booted into opensuse
(5) opened yast partitioner and edited the ssd entry to set a mountpoint
It worked perfectly. Thank you, all, for the advice. Also, yast partitioner seems like a great tool. I hadn’t opened it before.
