Problem recognizing partitions

[stodgel]

I am using Mandrake 8.2, and have been able to work with it much better than any other distro I have tried. Now I am having a problem because I have a dual-boot system with Windows 98 that I must have for games. I have just un-installed what I had on there and re-installed a stripped down un-encumbered version of W-98. But when I boot into Mandrake It doesn't recognize my new installation and partitions. it seems to want to keep reading the partitions that were there before. When it boots up it says something about filesystem ha schanged and has failed in red letters twice. It moves pretty fast so I can't quite catch exactly what it says.
My question is, how can I get Mandrake to recognize the new partions as they are, or mount points, I guess they're called? Under the mnt directory it has Windows, and program files, under the J drive, which was the last drive before, now it's I, but it's all screwed up.

[Aaron_Adams]

I'm not sure what the solution would be exactly, but I thought I'd let you know that there IS a way to go through the boot process on Mandrake and RedHat systems one test at a time, which makes it a lot easier to see what failed, etc.

I can't remember offhand how to do it either, as I haven't run either distro forever. Might be something for you to think about looking into though, so you can post the exact errors you're getting.

Have you tried mounting the partitions after the boot process, just from the console?

Try '$ mount -t FAT32 /dev/*** /mnt/Windows'

Just replace *** with whatever the windows partition is installed to.

Aaron

[JimH]

Did you just reinstall windows or both windows and Linux?

If you just reinstalled windoze then you will have to edit your /etc/fstab to reflect your new setup.

Post a copy of your current /etc/fstab. Along when a description of how your drives are partitioned.

Jim H

[stodgel]

The only thing I did was to re-install Windows only.

My Windows drives (I assume is what you meant) are partitioned C, D, E, F, G, H, I, CD-Rom-J, and CD Writer-K
Before I un-installed I had one more partition than I do now, so the letters were extended by one. They went through L.
I hope you don't need the sizes of the partitions. If so let me know, I'll have to boot into Windows to get the exact sizes. the entire drive is 40GB. I have two hard drives one for Windows and one for Linux. Master & Slave.

Here is a copy of my current /etc/fstab:
/dev/hdb1 / ext2 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /home ext2 defaults 1 2
/mnt/cdrom /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
/mnt/cdrom2 /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
/mnt/floppy /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=vfat,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda4 /mnt/win_d vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda7 /mnt/win_f vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda8 /mnt/win_g vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda9 /mnt/win_h vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda10 /mnt/win_i vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_j vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0 0

[JimH]

As root, post the output of this.

sfdisk -l /dev/hda

Jim H

[stodgel]

I couldn't tell if there was a space between fdisk and the -l so with no space I got this:

sfdisk-l/dev/hda
bash: sfdisk-l/dev/hda: No such file or directory
[root@ip68-98-142-179 michael]#

With a space I got this:

sfdisk -l/dev/hda
sfdisk: invalid option -- /
sfdisk version 3.07 (aeb@cwi.nl, 990908)
Usage: sfdisk [options] device ...
device: something like /dev/hda or /dev/sda
useful options:
-s [or --show-size]: list size of a partition
-c [or --id]: print or change partition Id
-l [or --list]: list partitions of each device
-d [or --dump]: idem, but in a format suitable for later input
-i [or --increment]: number cylinders etc. from 1 instead of from 0
-uS, -uB, -uC, -uM: accept/report in units of sectors/blocks/cylinders/MB
-T [or --list-types]:list the known partition types
-D [or --DOS]: for DOS-compatibility: waste a little space
-R [or --re-read]: make kernel reread partition table
-N# : change only the partition with number #
-n : do not actually write to disk
-O file : save the sectors that will be overwritten to file
-I file : restore these sectors again
-v [or --version]: print version
-? [or --help]: print this message
dangerous options:
-g [or --show-geometry]: print the kernel's idea of the geometry
-x [or --show-extended]: also list extended partitions on output
or expect descriptors for them on input
-L [or --Linux]: do not complain about things irrelevant for Linux
-q [or --quiet]: suppress warning messages
You can override the detected geometry using:
-C# [or --cylinders #]:set the number of cylinders to use
-H# [or --heads #]: set the number of heads to use
-S# [or --sectors #]: set the number of sectors to use
You can disable all consistency checking with:
-f [or --force]: do what I say, even if it is stupid

Is there a way to have the Windows hard drive not even mount at all, have it so that it was non-existent? Because I plan on using Transgaming Wine, and it works without Windows installed. It makes a fake Windows directory. To be able to take it back and forth would be good, or to just not mount at all.

[JimH]

sfdisk -l/dev/hda

Your missing the space between the -l and /dev/hda

Is there a way to have the Windows hard drive not even mount at all, have it so that it was non-existent?
[/quote

Comment out or remove the entries for the windoze partitions in fstab.

Jim H

[stodgel]

Sorry, I was wrong all the way around. I just copied what you wrote and pasted it (I should have done that to begin with).
Anyway this is what I got:

sfdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 4865 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 381 382- 3068383+ b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 382 4864 4483 36009697+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda5 382+ 1146 765- 6144831 b Win95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 1147+ 1911 765- 6144831 b Win95 FAT32
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,1,1)
/dev/hda7 1912+ 2676 765- 6144831 b Win95 FAT32
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,1,1)
/dev/hda8 2677+ 3696 1020- 8193118+ b Win95 FAT32
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,1,1)
/dev/hda9 3697+ 4716 1020- 8193118+ b Win95 FAT32
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,1,1)
/dev/hda10 4717+ 4864 148- 1188778+ 6 FAT16
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1023,1,1)

[JimH]

I looks like the only partition you removed is hda4. Just remove the entry for it from your fstab.

Jim H

[stodgel]

What about hda3? isn't it exactly the same as hda4? I actually wiped the whole other hard drive clean, deleted the partitions and reformated it with new partitions of different sizes and one less partition as well. When I try to access them from the file manager it seems as if they are all mixed up or something. However removing hda4 from fstab entirely did make the "failed" in red letters stop showing up when Linux would boot up, so I must be moving in the right direction.