Potential partition problem?

[wayne1932]

When I upgraded my system to 2010, I also put in a new harddrive, left my old one there (with KDE3.5 and WinXP) installed 2010 to the new drive, and formatted it ext4. 

In my exploration of the repos I discovered partitionmanager, and gparted, and installed them.  Both of them tell me my new drive is EMPTY, I am using it and writing from programs on it now.  My first drive shows up correctly, but it is also partitioned ext3.  I also have a utilities disk called Parted Magic that I downloaded and burned a few months back, It also uses gparted.  It tells me the same thing.  From within PCLOS2010, the new harddrive partitions appear to be just fine. 

My suspicion is this:  I guessing that partitionmanager and gparted, and their libraries, do not support ext4. 

No problems yet, but I sure like to have a lot of ways to cure any problems. If partitionmanager and gparted can't support ext4, I don't think they should be in the repositories.

[old_guy]

wayne1932
On my 2010 kde install I just installed partitionmanager through synaptic and it saw my ext3 and ext4 partitions fine. Then rebooted into PartitionMagic and it found everything as well.
I'm glad that everything seems to be working for you, but am not too sure about not seeing your ext4 partition.
Type in a terminal:
   df -T
what does it show?
Earl

[wayne1932]

Output of df -T

Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb5     ext4     12G  4.2G  7.1G  37% /
/dev/sda3     vfat     22G  4.6G   17G  22% /Win-D
tmpfs        tmpfs   1013M     0 1013M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb7     ext4     39G   30G  8.8G  78% /home
/dev/sdb8     ext4     66G   47G   16G  76% /usrData1
/dev/sdb9     ext4     97G   64G   28G  70% /usrData2
/dev/sda7     ext3     84G   49G   31G  62% /media/PCLOSHome
/dev/sda5     ext3    9.7G  5.4G  3.8G  60% /media/PCLOSRoot
/dev/sda1     vfat     30G   17G   14G  55% /media/WIN-C
/dev/sdc1     vfat     77G   33G   45G  43% /media/disk


Snapshot of Gparted for sdb

[Old-Polack]

wayne1932:

Open a root terminal and at the prompt;

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l              <Enter>

Post your results.

[wayne1932]

Here is output of fdisk -l         sdc is a usb  harddrive that is plugged in.


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3aa93aa8

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3872    31101808+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2            6631       19457   103032877+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3            3873        6630    22153635    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda5            6631        7905    10241406   83  Linux
/dev/sda6            7906        8167     2104483+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7            8168       19457    90686893+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        7192        7499     2474010   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2               1       42092   338103958+   5  Extended
/dev/sdb5               1        1568    12594897   83  Linux
/dev/sdb6            1569        2077     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb7            2078        7191    41078173+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb8            7500       16205    69930913+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb9           16206       42092   207937296   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdc: 82.0 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xccebcceb

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1        9964    80035798+   b  W95 FAT32

[Old-Polack]

Here is output of fdisk -l         sdc is a usb  harddrive that is plugged in.


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3aa93aa8

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3872    31101808+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2            6631       19457   103032877+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3            3873        6630    22153635    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda5            6631        7905    10241406   83  Linux
/dev/sda6            7906        8167     2104483+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7            8168       19457    90686893+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        7192        7499     2474010   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2               1       42092   338103958+   5  Extended
/dev/sdb5               1        1568    12594897   83  Linux
/dev/sdb6            1569        2077     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb7            2078        7191    41078173+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb8            7500       16205    69930913+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb9           16206       42092   207937296   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdc: 82.0 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xccebcceb

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1        9964    80035798+   b  W95 FAT32

Looks like you need to fix the partition tables on both sda and sdb. Note that your /dev/sdb1 is a swap partition, in the middle of the drive, on an extended partition that begins at the first cylinder of the drive, yet claims to be a primary boot partition. No wonder the poor apps are confused.

[wayne1932]

Snapshot of PCC.  sdb shows up just fine here, but not in partitionmanager or gparted.

[Old-Polack]

It's broke... fix it. 

[wayne1932]

Hmmmmm.   Hadn't noticed the extra swap partition before.  Without expanding the windows, It was just a sliver of space without indicating what it was.  I just remember having to run at the installation a couple of times, and then having a rough time with getting  the grub menu.lst set up right.  I wasn't ready to jettison KDE3.5.10 at the time. 

But with all that HD space I wasn't too concerned about what was used.  I remember all too well my first hard drive, sure was proud of that 10Mb.  It sure beat my 320Kb 5 1/4 floppies.

[Old-Polack]

Hmmmmm.   Hadn't noticed the extra swap partition before.  Without expanding the windows, It was just a sliver of space without indicating what it was.  I just remember having to run at the installation a couple of times, and then having a rough time with getting  the grub menu.lst set up right.  I wasn't ready to jettison KDE3.5.10 at the time. 

But with all that HD space I wasn't too concerned about what was used.  I remember all too well my first hard drive, sure was proud of that 10Mb.  It sure beat my 320Kb 5 1/4 floppies.

You don't need to reinstall anything, just fix the partition table. Fdisk works great for this sort of thing. You can delete the partition now showing as sdb1, then create a new one using the same start and end cylinders, but make it a logical partition instead of a primary. It will get created as a type 83 Linux partition, but you can change that to a type 82 swap ID. Last order of business would be to fix the partition order with the f command, from the x expert mode. When things look good the w command writes the new partition table to the drive.

None of your data is affected doing this. It just makes the partition table understandable to all the partitioning applications, so they don't screw things up the next time you need to do something with them.