Re: Re: Re: Re: Mount failed: Invalid argument

[Douglas Dreistadt <mobius@ii-okinawa.ne.jp>]

> 'mount -t ext2 /dev/hda3
/wherever/you/want/to/put/it', if it's a
> standard Linux filesystem.

Thanks to all for the advice so far. Let me
explain exactly what I have been trying. The
Debian installation program can't mount the root
partition because it contains an invalid argument,
so I went to the command prompt. According to the
install doc, I'm supposed to mount partition 3 as
the root. So following the syntax above, I tried:

   mount -t ext2 /dev/hda3 /
(read mount hda3 as root ??)

The result was:

   Mounting /dev/hda3 on / failed: Invalid
argument

Since that is not valid syntax, I thought, well,
the above explanation doesn't match the syntax
anyway. If the last part of the command is
"wherever/you/want/to/put/it" then where I want to
mount it is in the third partition, that is, hda3,
and what I want to put there is the root
directory, so the last 2 parts of the command must
be reversed. Right? So I tried:

   mount -t ext2 / /dev/hda3
(read mount root on hda3 ??)

The result was:

   Mounting / on /dev/hda3 failed: Block device
required

whatever that means. But at least the argument is
valid this time. Hmmm...

When I went to the command prompt, the Debian
installation program states onscreen that:

    The hard disk filesystems are mounted under
"/target"

Which, of course, is not true, because nothing is
mounted yet at all. So I looked at the
installation doc, and it states:

    If you are mounting a root partition for your
new system, just mount it to /target

OK. So I tried an ls command, and sure enough
there was a directory named /target. But why would
the hard disk filesystems be mounted under a
directory on the CD anyway? It makes no sense to
me to mount a directory on the CD, but it says I
should, and no examples of syntax are provided, so
I tried:

   mount -t ext2 /dev/hda3 /target

The result was:

   Mounting /dev/hda3 on /target failed: Invalid
argument

But wait a minute, it says I am supposed to mount
(the root) to /target, so I tried:

   mount -t ext2 / /target

which resulted in:

   Mounting / on /target failed: Invalid argument

So as you can see, I've been following directions
to the letter, but the directions themselves are
very vague, and either don't work or don't make
sense. This is the point at which I'm stuck. Can
anyone point the way out?

Doug