Advice please?(Re: [Sussex] Getting brave ?, perhaps not.)

[John D.]

On Sunday 07 Dec 2003 3:26 pm, John Crowhurst wrote:
<snip>
> mtab is the mount table for what is currently mounted, it is what mount
> uses to know what is currently mounted. Use fstab to load partitions on
> startup.
>
> To load all the partitions in fstab use:
>
> ~# mount -a

The "#mount -a" command just dropped me back into a # prompt, so I wasn't sure 
what to do from there, but your suggestion about the fstab (plus I saw Dave 
Chapman at work and he suggested using knoppix to look at the fstab to see 
how it had "seen" the partition, though I would have to work out which was 
the gentoo partition). The fstab currently looks like this,

<snip>
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom supermount 
dev=/dev/hdb,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount 
dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount 
dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows ntfs iocharset=iso8859-15,ro,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0

and from knoppix I got "/dev/hda4 /mnt/hda4 ext3 noauto,users,exec 0 0".

I tried various things like changing the /mnt/hda4 to /mnt/gentoo/hda4 (I made 
a directory called gentoo), and I just tried the identical output that I got 
from knoppix, but all it said was that I didn't have a "final newline" - 
whatever that could be, and I still couldn't manage to make it see the 
partition (I'm still convinced that I'm doing something fundamentally stupid 
- personal ignorance is a big factor in "this equation")
>
> Under DOS partitioning system you can only have 4 primary partitions. To
> get around this problem, Microsoft created a sub-partition system called
> extended partitions, where you lose a partition to become sub partitions.
> Logical partitions under Microsoft are there so that they can be labelled
> with an easy label as in C, D etc.
>
> You would need to create:
>
> hda1 = Windows
> hda2 = Mandrake
> hda3 = Swap
> hda4 = Extended
> +hda5 = Gentoo boot
> +hda6 = Gentoo root
>
> Or you could have:
>
> hda1 = Windows
> hda2 = Swap
> hda3 = Extended
> + hda5 = Mandrake Boot
> + hda6 = Mandrake Root
> + hda7 = Gentoo Boot
> + hda8 = Gentoo Root
>
I tried to do what you have suggested in the first bit, but for some strange 
reason (probably stupidity), I couldn't manage to make partition magic do 
this, as it seemed to follow Steve Dobson's suggestion of having the swap 
between the two linux install's - something about head movement between the 
swap and either of the distro's (Sorry Steve, I got a little over excited 
with my delete button).

Do you think that it's a good idea "to throw caution to the wind" and start 
from scratch (which I was trying to avoid) i.e. would this be the best idea 
???

<snip>
> > image=/boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
> > 	label="Gentoo"
> > 	root=/dev/hda4
> > 	initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
> > 	append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi"
> > 	read-only
<snip>
> What was the error message when you tried it?

When I did the above, the error was:

Boot image: /boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
Fatal: open /boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6: No such file or directory

<snip>
> Sounds like the kernel image was too big for the floppy. Have a look at
> the size of this kernel image with ls -l /boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
>
> You can mount the floppy to a loopback device and see what is on it that
> way or mount it to a directory, with:
>
> ~# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

I've tried to see if I can do the ls -l /boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6 but just 
get the "no such file or directory" error. 

When I try the "# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy" command, I'm just getting a bash 
reply 
[root at localhost john]# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
[root at localhost john]#

The floppy drive light comes on for a while before I get the above reply, and 
I've tried various "letters" (-t and stuff like that - are these the "things" 
called arguements ? ) anyhow, I've tried various ones that I've found at "man 
mount" and I just get dropped into the man page for mount.

Hence any advice/suggestions/idea's for the best "way forwards" (god, that 
sounds so "new Labour") would be excellent.

Just a quick additional one. Am I presuming correctly, that while bootloaders 
normally go in the first part of the hard disc, If I installed lilo for the 
gentoo install in the linux partition, would I be able to boot it from there 
somehow or would it cause conflict with the mandrake version currently 
resident in the first part of the hard drive ?

regards

John D.