Reformating Microdrive With Ext2 Options

[develd]

Hi,

for some "on the Z" developing I would like to change the partitions and filesystems on the C3000.

Right now I have these partions:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 204 102784+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 205 1020 411264 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 1021 7936 3485664 c FAT32
/dev/hda4 1 1 0 0 Empty

Does anybody know, if the hda4 is important for a bootloader or something else?

When comparing the partition size of hda3 between df and du output, the gap is about 500MB. What causes this? Hidden internas or just the M$ filesystem?

#df -h /hdd3
Filesystem Size Used Available
/dev/hda3 3.3G 993.2M 2.3G

#du -hs /hdd3
420.2M /hdd3

I would like to drop the hda4 partition and split the hda3 into 2GB ext2 and 1GB FAT32. I guess the FAT32 partition is needed when connecting the Z as usbstorage to a Windows box, right?

Thanks for Info,

Oliver

[develd]

@Kerensa: found one Debian on c3k howto at http://www.eleves.ens.fr/home/leurent/zaurus.html

@Chris: You have to take care of the complex boot process while the startup scripts depend on the partitions and do some tar extraction. I still haven't figured out what happends there exactly. With a clear defined ROM it shouldn't be a problem and I would prefer this too.

Btw. I haven't reformated the Zaurus HDD yet. I decided to create a ext2 loop device on /hdd3 with big packages like zgcc, perl, tetex and octave and mount it in rc.local to /mnt/pkgs.

I'm not shure if a Debian installation could be hold in a loop device since it must be available early in the boot process.

[flagar]

Hello,
I'm running successfully Debian PocketWorkstation within XQt on my SL-C3000 using 1Gb ext2 loopback file on the VFAT formatted hda3 partition on the microdrive.
I've simply followed the related HOWTO on the Debian Wiki (http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?PocketWorkstationXQT) first remembering to mount the loopback file at every boot before to launch the environment from the PocketWorkstation icon.

[AndyTiedye]

Has anybody tried a smaller FAT partition at hda3 and ext2 (or something more robust) on hda4?

That way, if you restore the default mount scripts, they should still succeed, because the partitions
they expect all exist. They wouldn't mount hda4, but they wouldn't fail the boot for lack of a fat hda3.

Should be less overhead than mounting an image.

[kahm]

Has anybody tried a smaller FAT partition at hda3 and ext2 (or something more robust) on hda4?

That way, if you restore the default mount scripts, they should still succeed, because the partitions
they expect all exist.  They wouldn't mount hda4, but they wouldn't fail the boot for lack of a fat hda3.

Should be less overhead than mounting an image.

Thats exactly what I'm going to try when I get my C3k, which isn't going to happen for a few days yet.