Somethings not quite right.

[Brody2]

Hi:

I've started the install process of Gentoo.

I've partitioned off my harddrive into 2. Windows XP, and Gentoo.

I've tried fdisk-ing the partitions per the instructions, and a "fdisk /dev/hda2" looks as follows:

Device boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda2p1 * 1 63 31720+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2p2 64 1056 500472 82 Linux swap/Solaris
/dev/hda2p3 1057 13451 6247080 83 Linux

My problem is when I try to apply a filesystem to a partition, i.e.:

mke2fs /dev/hda2p1

I get back the message
"Count not stat /dev/hda2p1 --- No such file or directory

The device apparently does not exist: did you specify it correctly?"


I'm confused?

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks,

Brody2

[Moriah]

You must run fdisk on the drive -- in your case fdisk /dev/hda

You are running fdisk on partition 2 of that drive. I am supprosed you did not just get an error message when you tried to start fdisk that way.
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[Raffi]

That looks like you are trying to partition a partition. That is not going to do what you think it is going to do.

You need to fdisk /dev/hda (not /dev/hda2) and put the first partition as a windows partition and then partition the rest of the disk into the number of partitions you want to use for gentoo. This assumes you will be using the xp boot manager to boot linux.

If you want to control things with grub, put the first partition (50 or so meg) as a boot partition and the second as xp and the rest as gentoo. Most likely you will need to use extended partition to get what you want.

[Raffi]

[Brody2]

My disk is already partitioned. I used partiionCommander, so can I skip the fdisk and filesystem steps?

Thanks,

Brody

[Taladar]

The Linux harddisk naming works this way:
/dev/hda first IDE controller, master
/dev/hdb first IDE controller, slave
/dev/hdc second IDE controller, master
...

/dev/hda1 first primary partition on /dev/hda
/dev/hda2 second primary partition on /dev/hda
...
/dev/hda5 first logical (inside an extended) partition on /dev/hda
...

So /dev/hda2p1 is not a valid name in linux

[Raffi]

[Brody2]

[Raffi]

I don't know much about partition commander. It may be how you used it and not the tool itself

If I were trying to setup a system like this, I would partition in the following fashion:

(The follow assumes you have deleted all partition first, so insert the appropriate commands to clean out old partitions)

fdisk /dev/hda
n
p
1
<RETURN> # actually hit the return, don't type '<RETURN>'
+50M
n
p
2
<RETURN>
+XXG # The XX here is the number of Gigs you want to use for windows
n
p
3
<RETURN>
+XXM # The XX here is the number of megabytes you want to use for swap
n
e
<RETURN>
<RETURN>
n
<RETURN>
+XXG # XX is the number of gigs to use for / on linux

Repeat the last 3 commands to create additional partitions for /users or whatever else you want (you can also just take all the space for /). Write the partition table when you are done.

[markkuk]

[Brody2]

Ok, I'll try that. I'll shrink the Windows partition, but I'll leave the rest as FREE space.

Thanks,

Brody