Multiple HD Issues

[sh00der]

How's it going? I have finally managed to get round to upgrading my RedHat 8.0 to Fedora, but heres the thing ...

I have RedHat installed on an 80GB HD, but it has problems so I want to do a fresh install of Fedora. I have two other spare 10GB HDs, one with Windblows ME on. At the moment I have a dual boot using Grub where I can choose to boot into either system.

I disconnected both the HDs and put the other 10GB drive in and installed Fedora on it, again with Grub. I was hoping that I could mount the Fedora HD from within RedHat in the same way I did with the old ME drive and then transfer the files I want to keep. The problem is that it gets confused during start up and seems to load bits from each drive.

How do I fix it so that I can access both Linux drives at once?

I want to then put XP on the 80GB drive so that I can access the larger drive from either OS, are there any pitfalls I need to be aware of?

I've only had an hour or so on Fedora but it looks like a massive improvement over RH8.0 (so far). Thanks

[Void Main]

I'm not quite sure I follow everything you have done and where you want to be. Partition layouts every step of the way would help me visualize what your aiming for. Having said that I can think of two things that you must consider when moving drives around after installing, and having two Red Hat/Fedora installations on the same machine. Both of them will require manipulation of your /etc/fstab on both installations. Red Hat and Fedora installations usually use file system LABELs (LABEL=/, etc) in the /etc/fstab rather than device names (/dev/hda1, etc). If that is the case on both of your installations then you'll have confusion because you'll have two partitions with the same label and each installation will probably go to the first partition it finds with that label. You have a couple of options in this case, you can either relabel your partitions so they are all unique and then updating your /etc/fstab files with the new labels or you can change the LABEL statements in your /etc/fstab files to physical device names. If your Red Hat root partition is on "/dev/hda1" and your Fedora root partition is on "/dev/hdb1" then you'll have to edit the fstab file on each partition and put the appropriate one in the appropriate place.

The other possibility is you installed on /dev/hdb (slave) and then moved it to another machine as /dev/hda (master) and you were using device names instead of the LABEL way as mentioned above then you'll have to change your fstab to reflect the new device names. But since it is Red Hat and Fedora we are talking about I am assuming the first thing I mentioned to be the problem you are actually experiencing. If I didn't understand your predicament then I'm going to have to ask for a few more details.

[sh00der]

Yeah, sorry about that I'm finding it a bit hard to explain but I think you're first answer is kind of where I'm going.

The bottom line is that I have RH8.0 on a drive and I want to install Fedora onto another drive so that I can boot into Fedora and mount the RH drive to transfer any files I want without having to back up to CDRs. Then I can wait for a while to make sure I have everything before removing RH8.0 from the large drive.

I'm a bit fuzzy on partitions but RH8.0 was installed with automatic partitions with only the 80GB drive connected. Only the spare 10GB drive was connected when installing Fedora, again with auto-partitioning.

Is there an easier way to have both distros installed on 2 drives before moving over to Fedora? I guess the other thing to do is backup everything and then wipe RH8.0? I'm just concerned that I won't backup everything I need.

Thanks for your help

[Basher52]

Both in Fedora and RH7,8,9 u can use the manual partitioning, thus only use the 10Gb drive for Fedora and NOT format the 80Gb drive and thereby copy any files u want... I did this once.

But problem for me the first time was to know how big every partitions had to be for eg. boot, so I just used the automatic partitioning and look at it and then go back and do it manually, becouse this wont empty your drives.

B52

[Void Main]

I don't understand why you don't just do an "upgrade" install of Fedora, then you don't have to mess with any of that. However, there is no reason you can't install them both as you are trying. Just take note of the existing partition names and what is mounted where (type "mount" to get a list) and to get a partition list of each hard drive you can "fdisk -l /dev/hda" and "fdisk -l /dev/hdb". This really is easy stuff. And after you install your second OS just mount the partition of the other and do your copying. You can create a directory anywhere you want (usually something like "/mnt/rh8root") and then mount your rh8 root partition on that directory. If it is on /dev/hda1 the command would be "mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/rh8root"). Then all of your RH8 root file system files will show up under /mnt/rh8root. Of course if you want that to mount every time you boot you'll have to add it to your /etc/fstab file.

[sh00der]

I don't want to do an upgrade of Fedora because my RH installation has issues like I said, mainly from me trying to get things working. I don't have a problem mounting drives but I am struggling with having two bootable linux drives in one system.
Sorry if

this really is easy stuff

I am trying to learn.
I guess I should really find a newbie forum.
Thanks

[Void Main]

I didn't mean it that way. But the only way I can help is if you give me a real good picture of what you are doing (I'm stupid). I need to see as much information as possible about your setup. That is your drive sizes, current partition maps, and a parition map of what you would like it to be when you are finished. I can help you get there. I meant it is easy stuff once you've done it once or twice. Surely it doesn't seam easy until you understand it. I think you will agree once you do though. What I would like to see as far as curent partition maps are the outputs from the following commands:

Code: Select all

# fdisk -l /dev/hda
# fdisk -l /dev/hdb (if you have one)
# cat /etc/fstab


That should be a good start to get a current picture.

[sh00der]

I started looking at the partitions but as luck would have it a friend of mine had an old 10GB hard drive that he let me have. So now I have formatted that as an ext2 drive and backed up the following directories,

home (root and users)
etc
usr
var

One more question for you then, can you suggest any other files to back up before I wipe the old drive?
Thanks for you patience

[Void Main]

Do you run a database (mysql or postgresql)? If so you'll want to do a dump and back that up. I would think you have most of the system backed up with the directories you list but there is really no way for me to tell without knowing your install habits. Glad you were able to get a drive and find a way to get to your ultimate goal. I don't want to jinx it or anything though. :)

[sh00der]

Hooray, I'm getting somewhere but I need your help again. Looks like I might need to sort this partition stuff out after all...

Now I have independantly bootable Fedora and XP drives.
From Google it seems that I need an rpm file to access the XP NTFS drive and that it might be read only. I couldn't find anything in freshrpms, can you please let me know what I need to do to get read/write access if possible?

When booting into Fedora, the XP drive is on hda as follows...
# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 9963 80027766 7 HPFS/NTFS

and Fedora is on hdc as follows,

# fdisk -l /dev/hdc

Disk /dev/hdc: 10.0 GB, 10005037056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1216 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdc2 14 1086 8618872+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc3 1087 1216 1044225 82 Linux swap

Does it matter that they're this way round?

By the way your Fedora tip for apt was spot on, thanks again. I've lost count of the times this site has sorted me out.

[Void Main]

You can get the NTFS kernel modules in RPM form here:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/index.html

The NTFS driver is read-only so if you need a partition that both can write to you'll need to make a FAT or FAT32 parition. You should be able to install the RPM and then immediately be able to mount your NTFS partition:

Code: Select all

# mkdir /xp
# mount /dev/hda1 /xp


And of course if you want it to mount at boot time you'll need to add an entry for it in your /etc/fstab:

Code: Select all

/dev/hda1               /xp                     ntfs    ro,umask=0222   0 0


Just make sure you get the NTFS RPM that matches your kernel version. Glad to hear you got everything working!

P.S. While you are booted into Linux you will be able to copy stuff "from" your NTFS partition. While booted into XP you can use a free utility called "explore2fs" to copy things from your Linux parition. You should be able to find it on a Google search.

[sh00der]

Has anyone tried this Captive program for NTFS read/write access?

http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/#notes

[sh00der]

Sorry about this but I'm back again. I got everything sorted but have already run into a situation where I needed to transfer files from Linux to XP. So here's what I want to do...

Split the 80GB hdd into two 40GB partitions, one NTFS with XP on, and the other FAT32 for filesharing and general backup/storage. This will be a permanent drive. What would be the best tool for a novice to set up these partitions? Does this mean XP will need installing again?

Fedora is installed on a removable 10GB drive but to get to it I have to set it as boot disk in my bios.
Can I safely install grub onto the XP drive? I thought I could do

grub-install /dev/hda

but while searching I have seen various posts about problems installing grub onto the MBR of the XP drive. Also where would it put the grub.conf file and would I need to modify the current grub installation on the Fedora drive?

It probably doesn't seem like it with all these questions, but I feel as though I'm much closer to getting a handle on this stuff.