Graeme Nichols wrote:
>
> Hello Folks,
>
> Please bear with me if the questions I am about to ask appear to be a
> bit silly. I am completely new to Linux.
>
> I have just installed Red Hat Linux 6.1 onto a 10G HD.
Welcome!
[...]
> Linux still works fine. WIN 98 works just fine and doesn't hang around
> trying to sort out the HD. It sees C, D & E (the CDRom). I can go to the
> D drive under Win 98 but again cannot actually do anything such as DIR.
> A message comes back saying that some thing else has the drive. I am not
> game to try a format on D in case it may be the Linux partition.
You mat be able to get a better idea what's happening under windows by
running fdisk form a DOS prompt and select 4 > Display partition
information. This should indicate which partitions windows consideres
to be which letters. Be warned that the partitions dont always apear in
numerical order; on my system it's hda2 <hda5 hda6> hda3, with hda1
being the extended partition.
> I don't
> know how to look at it under Linux. There appears to be no fdisk on my
> Linux system or the boot disk created during install so I cannot work
> out what Linux thinks are there.
They should be installed. Make sure you are logged in as root, and you
should find both fdisk and cfdisk in /sbin. (cfdisk is a lot easier to
use than fdisk, but either will do)
On my system (Mandrake 7.1) they are part of the util-linux package.
You can check to see if this is installed by running
rpm -qa | grep util-linux
(This lists all the installed RPMs, and the grep filters out all lines
that don't contain util-linux)
If you need to install it, try something like:
cd /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS
rpm -i util-linux-2.10h.rpm
(use ls util* to find the actual package name)
If you are logged in as a user, you won't have access to the sbin
utilities (sbin stands for super-user binaries)
> During bootup the following message is
> in dmesg, Partition check. hda: hda1 hda2 <hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8>. The 4
> partitions I created during the linux install appear to be there.
> My question therefore is, how can I check out those 4 partitions.
running [fdisk will display a list of partitions and types. This is the
output from cfdisk on my system:
cfdisk 2.10h
Disk Drive: /dev/hda
Size: 8455200768 bytes
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63
Cylinders: 1027
Name Flags Part Type FS
Type [Label] Size (MB)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
hda2 Primary Linux
ext2 16.46
hda5 Logical Linux
swap 131.61
hda6 Logical
Linux 4293.60
hda3 Boot Primary Win95
FAT32 4005.72
Important things to check for to make sure windows works:
Exactly one partition set bootable, and it should probably be the
windows partition
Only one Primary partition of a type usable by windows
Linux partitions should be type Linux ext2 (83), swap should be Linux
Swap (82) and Windows should be FAT32 (0B) unless you intend to use
FAT16 for some reason like compatability with NT 4.0.
>How
> can I format hda8 to be a FAT32 partition
mkfs -t vfat /dev/hda8
Make sure it is fat 32 (0B) first and not Fat16 (DOS >= 32). If you do
want fat16, use -t msdos.
It's also possible to format using a MSDOS bootdisk and the MS format
command.
If you want to change the partition from DOS >=32 to FAT32 use cfisk.
> (providing, of course, that it
> is the 4G partition I created at install time as a dos >=32 (the other 3
> partitions are root, boot and swap.) Can I format it under WIN 98? Is
> the D drive WIN 98 sees the dos >=32 partition or one of the other Linux
> partitions?
>
> There are other docs I would like to get, eg. Linux USers Guide and
> Linus FAQs and CONFIG.HOWTO at the same site.
They may already be installed in /usr/doc
/usr/doc/HOWTO for the Howtos
/usr/doc/LDP for a few guides
> What am I doing wrong?
Nothing. You're starting to learn a new operating system, and it's
natural that it takes you a while to pick it up.
>
> I know this is all pretty simple stuff to experienced users but if
> someone can help me with this simple stuff I can start, hopefully,
> looking after myself.
It can be hard starting out - but it's worth it.
- Doug
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