Quick question about formatting existing partitions...

redkazan · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

Hey All:

I'm relatively new to the Linux world (a few weeks), and have dabbled with Fedora Core 1 (almost too good -- just like windows; everything you could ever want and all bogged down) and Slackware (the opposite of FC1). It's about time I tried out Gentoo, simply because I love having direct control over *everything* that goes onto my system, and I think compiling all of your programs (from the kernel on up) is just so 1337.

Also, I want to see what all the buzz is about.

Anyway, my question is that my system is already partitioned to dual boot Linux and XP. hd1 is XP, hd5 is Linux, hd6 is Swap, and hd7 is a big chunk of FAT32 that I can use to transfer things between the OSes. So, I'm sitting here at the Gentoo install prompt, wondering if there's a way to format (clean off) hda5 before continuing with the installation. Also, what do I need to mount? Should I mount hda5 to /mnt/gentoo, or should I just mount proc?

Edit: One more thing. Slack used lilo (installed to my MBR) as a bootloader. I guess I need to know the name of the new kernel, and where it will be (/boot?), so that I can add an entry to it in my lilo.conf *before* I lose the ability to do so (otherwise I'll install Gentoo, reboot, and lilo will still be looking for my Slack kernels [vmlinuz and vmlinuz-2.6.1]).

Shoot, sorry, last thing -- I'm running off of a LiveCD install (the one optimized for P4s).

Thanks in advance!

rk

PovMan · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Posts: 375 Location: Australia

to clean off your hda5 you should first mount it somewhere then rm -rf everything, or if that doesn't work then (last resort, quite dangerous) maybe dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda5 will.
The install guide is very good, it will lead you every step of the way from partitioning to installing bootloaders. if you just follow that to the letter you should have no problems with lilo! (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1)
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redkazan · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

PovMan:

Thanks for the reply. So rm -rf will completely wipe the partition? Alrighty, I'll mount the partition and see if rm -rf will work. There's nothing akin to just formatting the partition (like the format.com command from Dos/Windows)?

Then, the question is, if I'm installing from the LiveCD, do I need to actually mount the empty filesystem to, say, /mnt/gentoo, or do I just need to mount proc? The install guide is a little vague.

Here's a link; it's at the bottom.

Good news about Lilo. That'll teach me to ask questions before actually getting to that point in the process

.

-rk

nahpets · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:11 am Post subject:

You can also wipe hda5 by using:

- mkreiserfs
- mkfs

These are analogous to "format" in DOS/Win

redkazan · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

nahpets:

Okay, so if I run the command: mke2fs -j /dev/hda5 it will reformat the file system, even though it is already ext3?

*still wondering what I need to mount after hda5 is clean*

Thanks,

rk

nahpets · Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:43 am Post subject:

PovMan · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Posts: 375 Location: Australia

redkazan · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2004 Posts: 13

Ahh, I was misreading the bottom of chapter 4. I thought it was saying you either need to mount your new filesystem OR, if you're using a LiveCD, you need to mount proc, OR, if you're not using a LiveCD, you need to bindmount proc.

In reality, it's saying: mount your FS, mount proc, but if you are not installing Gentoo from a LiveCD, you need to bindmount proc.

It's late, sorry for troubling you guys

. Thanks for the tip re: formatting.

rk