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TripleM
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 Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 1:47 pm Post subject: Formatted partition remains vfat |
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Last night I decided to try Gentoo Linux, so I made the cd, printed the manual and deleted a Windows XP partition (2.6 Gb) for some space.
Using fdisk, I created 3 partitions (all type 83, I know one should have been 82 but I forgot): 100 Mb boot (/dev/hda8), 256 Mb swap (/dev/hda9) and the rest as root (/dev/hda10).
Installing Gentoo went very smooth, kudos to the manual maker  I used the following fstab file:
/dev/hda8 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda10 / ext2 noatime 0 0
/dev/hda9 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
I only changed the hdaX parts, the rest was there already.
I installed Grub, telling it about my Linux and XP partitions. No problem until then. I could boot into Gentoo perfectly. When I booted into XP for the first time, there was a lot of disk activity for a couple of minutes. I couldn't find anything wrong with the system so I just went on with my work. This morning I booted the system into Gentoo and wanted to compile a new kernel. So I mounted /dev/hda8 as /boot, but when I looked there:
HostKeyDatabase Recycled SecureFX.dat SecureFX.idx
These are the files that were in the partition I deleted!!! Okay, so I checked my mount points using mount:
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
tmpfs on /mnt/.init.d type tmpfs (rw,mode=0644,size=1024k)
/dev/hda8 on /boot type vfat (rw)
Why is it vfat!? Okay, so I decided to unmount (umount /boot), reformat (mke2fs /dev/hda8) and remount (/mount /dev/hda8 /boot), typed mount again, only to find the same results! The same files are still there as well!
My question is, what is wrong here? Why does my system boot if /dev/hda8 obviously doesn't have a bzImage, nor grub. I'm totally clueless here, and I'm no Linux expert. I wouldn't know what to do next except start all over, I'm hoping you people can tell me something more. |
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jay
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Joined: 08 May 2002
Posts: 980
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| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 3:12 pm Post subject: |
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Use fdisk in linux to get more informations for your partition layout. "p" will give you a nice overview. You can also change the partition type for your swap partition with fdisk from 82 to 83....
Post your results here...
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Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 10:21 pm Post subject: |
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Today i started from scratch.. Because when I did another mke2fs on /dev/hda8 and mounted it as /boot it was still mounted as fat..
After rebooting, grub gave error 15, the boot partition was probably empty..
I walked through the installation script by the letter this time, everything works fine now. Except one thing. I forgot to enable my network card in the kernel. So I decided to mount /dev/hda8 as /boot again and see if grub and bzImage were there. No suck luck of course. It is again mounting as vfat and again I see the 4 Windows files in there.
I will post my partition information in a minute, but this time swap is type 82 and /dev/hda8 and /dev/hda10 are type 83.
Could it have something to do with the fact that the three Linux partitions are in the extended partition I created when installing Windows? I'm not much of a partition expert.
But still, if it booted it must have grub and my bzImage somewhere. I don't understand what I could have done wrong..  |
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TripleM
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| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2002 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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My partition information, from fdisk in Linux:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 17 1322 10490445 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 1323 5606 34411230 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1323 2628 10490413+ b FAT32
/dev/hda6 2624 3924 10490413+ b FAT32
/dev/hda7 3935 5240 10490413+ b FAT32
/dev/hda8 5241 5253 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 5254 5286 265041 82 Linux Swap
/dev/hda10 5287 5606 2570368+ 83 Linux |
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TripleM
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 7:29 am Post subject: |
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I've been thinking. Is it possible for a partition to be mounted in different ways? I mean, I am positive that /dev/hda8 was used as /boot, can it be that it can be mounted as vfat as well as ext2?
And could the fact that the Linux partitions are in the extended partition with the Windows partitions, or doesn't that matter? |
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jay
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 8:48 am Post subject: |
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| TripleM wrote: | I've been thinking. Is it possible for a partition to be mounted in different ways? I mean, I am positive that /dev/hda8 was used as /boot, can it be that it can be mounted as vfat as well as ext2?
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No -- you would get a error message like "wrong filesystem"
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And could the fact that the Linux partitions are in the extended partition with the Windows partitions, or doesn't that matter? |
No. Linux handles extended partitions just fine.
I am quite sure that always the wrong partition is mounted - either hda5, hda6 or hd7, we have to track this down. First do an "umount /boot" then check with "ls-l /boot" that this directory is empty.
Then you should mount boot by using "mount /dev/hda8 /boot" instead of using "mount /boot". Does this work?
Could you also please post your /etc/fstab here?
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TripleM
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 10:01 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
I am quite sure that always the wrong partition is mounted - either hda5, hda6 or hd7, we have to track this down. First do an "umount /boot" then check with "ls-l /boot" that this directory is empty.
Then you should mount boot by using "mount /dev/hda8 /boot" instead of using "mount /boot". Does this work?
Could you also please post your /etc/fstab here? |
I always used /dev/hda8 /boot so that can't be the problem. On my first install, I'm positive /boot was empty, because I copied the new bzImage there and apart from that there was nothing in there. No grub either.
I posted my /etc/fstab in my first post, I can post the one from my new installation tonight. hda5, 6 and 7 are my Windows partitions (drive D, E and F), as you can see in the partition table. Those aren't it, I'm positive. I created hda8  |
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TripleM
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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There is another reason why I know that /dev/hda8 is the correct partition: grub!
In grub, I put hd(0,0) as the boot partition for Gentoo Linux, which corresponds to hda8.
Apparantly, the partition is being mounted wrong for some weird reason. I don't have an other explanation. Tonight I'll try to mount it as ext2 and see what happens. |
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TripleM
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Joined: 07 Jun 2002
Posts: 3
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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I made a mistake, I typed hd(0,0) when of course I meant hd(0,7), which corresponds to hda8.
I registered so I can edit my posts next time, and I bet I'll love Gentoo when this problem is solved so I'll stick around..
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jay
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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| TripleM wrote: |
I always used /dev/hda8 /boot so that can't be the problem. On my first install, I'm positive /boot was empty, because I copied the new bzImage there and apart from that there was nothing in there. No grub either. |
Apparently, that's your problem. There should be at least some files and a grub directory in it:
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bash-2.05a# ls -l /boot
total 4391
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 May 17 15:34 backup
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1 May 23 16:11 boot -> .
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 895117 May 30 14:56 bzImage
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 778593 May 30 14:47 bzImage.18
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 944853 May 29 22:49 bzImage.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 941319 May 28 15:08 bzImage.orig
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 894193 May 24 01:40 bzImage.r1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Jun 4 17:43 grub
drwx------ 2 root root 12288 May 17 13:53 lost+found
bash-2.05a#
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TripleM
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Joined: 07 Jun 2002
Posts: 3
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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| jay wrote: | Apparently, that's your problem. There should be at least some files and a grub directory in it:
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Well, no not really. The installation manual says this:
| Gentoo Build Manual wrote: | | During normal day-to-day Gentoo Linux use, your boot partition should remain unmounted. This prevents your kernel from being made unavailable to GRUB (due to filesystem corruption) in the event of a system crash, preventing the chicken-and-egg problem where GRUB can't read your kernel (since your filesystem isn't consistent) but you can't bring your filesystem back to a consistent state (since you can't boot!) |
In other words, it shouldn't be mounted after I boot. That's why /boot was empty, however it shouldn't be empty after I mount /dev/hda8 to it. And it isn't, only it contains the wrong files.
After a chat on #gentoo I decided to try and mount /dev/hda8 as ext2 by using "mount -t ext2 /dev/hda8 /boot" and see what happens then. I'll keep you informed.
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TripleM
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Joined: 07 Jun 2002
Posts: 3
Location: The Netherlands
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2002 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, problem solved.
I should have mounted /boot by typing 'mount /boot', then linux would have checked the fstab file and see that it should be mounted as ext2. Mounting it using 'mount -t ext2 /dev/hda8 /boot' worked like a charm.
When using 'mount /dev/hda8 /boot' caused linux to check what was on the partition, it found my old files and therefore assumed it had to mount the partition as vfat.
Thanks for your help, hope this is helpful for other people and their noobness 
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pjp
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Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 20067
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| Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2002 6:27 am Post subject: |
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| jay wrote: | | Quote: | | And could the fact that the Linux partitions are in the extended partition with the Windows partitions, or doesn't that matter? |
No. Linux handles extended partitions just fine. |
Just because I like being the exception... I could not get Gentoo installed within an extended partition. Once I set up primary partitions, I had no troubles.
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jay
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| Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2002 7:55 am Post subject: |
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The exeption always confirms the common behaviour
Glad that it worked - but why doesn't this happen on my pc? I have also a partitions that contain vfat files but is mounted properly as ext2 when I type mount /dev/hdc2 /files
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Installing Gentoo
