C3000 Hd Partitioning Musings

[Howitzer]

I'm at the stage in rebuilding my 3K that I want to start thinking about how to use it to best advantage.  So I thought before I started dropping applications and data onto /hdd3 I'd consider some amount of HD customization.

Specifically, being a bit of a purist, I'm not entirely happy having /hdd3 be completely VFAT, and having my ext3 symbolic links pointing to a file system that will not support the ext2/3 filesystem structure.  
However, if I just smash hdd3 and make it ext3 then I lose the USB HD function the 3K provides.  So I see value in having a VFAT partition for that.

So I'm thinking I should repartition /dev/hdc3 into two chunks.  One I will make VFAT to preserve USB HD, and the other ext3 to permit the symbolic link to /hdd3/Documents to point to a journalled file system.  I was thinking a 512/1.5M split.  

But, thinks I, /hdd1, /hdd2, and /hdd3 are hard drive mount points for the stock three partitions.  I just don't know if these are in the FLASH portion of the filesystem.  So if I wanted to make a /hdd4 mount point, what would I have to do to make it?

Or should I just bag that plan and create a different mount point in one of the HD partitions and mount the virtual /hdd4 somewhere in that tree?

I figure I still keep the ext3/ext3/vfat order of the stock rom and just append another ext3 partition.  This would keep the rc.rofilesys boot structure happy, and I could just add a line to /etc/rc.local to mount the final partition.

Is there a better way to accomplish this?

[bam]

just edit the rc.rofilesystem structure to use ext2/3, then use samba to access your hdd's from a desktop/laptop comp

[euroclie]

So I'm thinking I should repartition /dev/hdc3 into two chunks.  One I will make VFAT to preserve USB HD, and the other ext3 to permit the symbolic link to /hdd3/Documents to point to a journalled file system.

I've done just that, because I wanted to put a Debian/PocketWorkStation install on the hard drive to test it. I didn't want to lose the VFAT partition either, because it can be very handy at times, so I kept the 3rd partition on the hard drive as a VFAT partition, and created a fourth one with a Linux format (ext3).

Actually, I backed up everything on /hdd3, deleted the partition, then re-created a third (VFAT) and fourth partition (ext3), then created the new mount point /hdd4 (you have to remount the root partition with the rw option instead of read-only for that, and while you do this you can also alter the rc.* files to reflect the change.

Note that you'll need a copy of the fdisk utility that works with the Zaurus (I remember reading that the version provided by default (if there's any) is broken and won't work), otherwise I know that the needed tools (mke2fs to format the new ext2 partition, and the tool to format the new VFAT partition) were provided with the Cacko ROM I'm using.

You can have a look here: http://www.eleves.ens.fr/home/leurent/zaurus.html and the first and second paragraph will give you some help on that subject. I've just added stuff in rc.rofilesys for the /hdd4 partition instead of commenting out the VFAT stuff for /hdd3 like Gaëtan LEURENT suggested on the above-mentioned link.

I can upload my rc.rofilesys later if you are interested...