Re: hey
robin@silvereye.se wrote:
> hi, im having probs formatting and partition my other disc.
>
I would suggest you use a more descriptive subject line, such as "how to
partition/format a disk?". Otherwise, your message is likely to get
scrapped by many readers on this list before ever being seen.
> im new to debian so i dont basically know what most commands do.
>
> i use hda1 with 40gig of space where Debian is installed.
> i have another disc with 250gig of space.
>
> i need to format and partition the other disc into two pieces of which are
> 125gig each. (or one with 125gig and one with the rest)
>
As root, run "cfdisk /dev/hdb".
(The "hdb" may not be correct; it depends on whether you have IDE
drives, or SATA, or SCSI, etc etc etc). If you run the command "dmesg |
grep dev" you'll probably see some of the boot messages that refer to
your drives, giving you a clue as to which device "name" to use. Your
first (IDE) hard drive is probably /dev/hda; your second is probably
/dev/hdb; your CD-ROM is probably /dev/hdc; and a fourth would be /dev/hdd.)
Within "cfdisk", you can partition your drive as you see fit. It's a
fairly intuitive program, with the commands at the bottom of the screen
being selectable with the arrow keys or the first letter of the command.
Once you've made your changes and "w"ritten them to the drive, you're
ready to format the partitions.
To format a partition, say, the first partition on the drive, which
would likely be "/dev/hdb1", as root, run the command "mkfs.ext3
/dev/hdb1". This assumes you want an ext3 type partition (a good choice
for a beginner).
Now that you've formatted the partition, do the same for /dev/hdb2 (or
whatever your second partition is named).
Now, to use those partitions, you must mount them. Create a directory
name on which to mount them, such as by running (as root) "mkdir
/BigSpace2" and "mkdir /BigSpace2". It doesn't matter what you call
these "mount points". Now mount them with the command (as root) "mount
/dev/hdb1 /BigSpace1" and "mount /dev/hdb2 /BigSpace2".
These two partitions are now mounted, and you can see the contents
(empty right now) of them with a command like "ls -la /BigSpace1".
The next time you reboot, these partitions will not be mounted, unless
you add a "mount instruction" to "/etc/fstab". Also, depending on the
parameters you feed to the mount command (either when manually mounting,
as above, or automagically mounting via the /etc/fstab file), the
partitions will be "owned" or "usable" only to the users specified in
those parameters. You can get more information from "man mount" or "man
fstab" or by googling for fstab or mount, etc.
It all sounds complex and convoluted, and there are GUI tools to help
simplify things, but I think you'll be better off doing it manually this
time around so that you'll get an understanding of what's going on
"under the hood".
--
Kent
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