Reformating Microdrive With Ext2

[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

[m-morino]

Hi develd,

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

... snip ...

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?
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Yes, it's desirable that /dev/hda3 is formatted with FAT32 when you play with Windoze.

The fdisk command initially introduced in the C3000 is somewhat broken and shows the incorrect partition table.
/dev/hda4 really doesn't exist.

You need newer fdisk command to do that.

[a href=\"http://morimasa.net/zaurus/binaries/fdisk]http://morimasa.net/zaurus/binaries/fdisk[/url]

HTH,

--
  m-morino

[darkloran]

Hi develd,

You need newer fdisk command to do that.

http://morimasa.net/zaurus/binaries/fdisk

 be careful to use the fdisk mentionned bu m-morino or you'll get into big trouble [once you delete /dev/hda3 with the fdisk provided in the Z, /dev/hda4 becomes /dev/hda3 and if you create another partition it becomes /dev/hda4... and the ending 0 partition is before it)

if you were to change the /dev/hda3 in ext2 (as i did it) because you don't care of zindoze matters, be careful to change startup scripts as /root/etc/rc.d/rc.rofilesys as it tries to mount /dev/hda3 (or /dev/hdd3 depending on your Z) with fat32.

the procedure is described on the page linked in the "Full debian" topic of C3000 forum.

[develd]

Thanks both of you for your infos.

I will change my partitions this weekend.

  Bye

[Kerensa]

Newbie question here. I too would like to install Debian and still have a FAT32 partition. How do I put the binary for fdisk on my c3000 for use? Tips on were to look for such help would be welcome also.

Thank you,
Kerensa

[cradlinski]

Is it possible to repartition the whole drive as one big ext2 partition?  Does the C3000 require a particular partition layout?

[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.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=72473\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

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