Partition Sd 4gig - Hmmm

[loji]

I just got a new 4 gig card  YAY!!   now I want to partition it, so I have a vfat partition, and an ext2 partition ...

I'm using fdisk as shipped with pdaXrom beta3 - I have replaced the SD driver with the newer tetsu/cresho one (from the newer 3200 series)

I fdisk /dev/mmcda

and create two new partitions. (at cylinders 1600 and 2407)

This should give me two partitions roughly 3 gigs and 1 gig .. or close enough.

then I use the type option to set primary partition 1 to type 6 (fat16) and primary partition 2 to type 83 (linux)

Then I do mkfs.msdos /dev/mmcda1
and a mkfs.ext2 /dev/mmcda2

mkdir /mnt/ext2

a mount -t ext2 /dev/mmcda2 /mnt/ext2 fails with a generic error .. wrong fs, too many mounted file systems ... etc ...  Not sure why this is happening. . .

And when I put the SD card into my windows machine, it only reconizes 1 gig. (.99 to be exact) I figured this was because of choosing fat16 and a limitation. so I chose hex option b (fat32) the next time I fdisked the card ... and still the same problem.


I have since re-built the partition info, and formatted in windows to get the full 4gigs in vfat. However -- I don't like that it didn't work ... I followed all the instructions I've found perfectly, and I understand what it is doing and how it's happening ... but I don't see where my error is occuring.

Anyone else have some input that might help me out on this? I would like to install GIMP + extra brushes on the SD card since I don't have enough room for it internally.


Thanks!  

[Cresho]

keep it simple, as far as I can tell, lots of things are buggy

[loji]

it's only creating two partitions ... I was originally going to do 3 and use swap at the end of the drive ... but /dev/mmcda3 wasn't being crated, so I said screw it.

Also is using fdisk going through the SD driver? I suppose it would have to be. . . I could change it back to the pdax_mmc and try that I suppose ... but I find it very strange that i can't get the partitions created correctly . . .   I thought maybe I use using outdated tools or something. .


or do you mean to keep my explination simple? I was writing a tutorial as I was working, so I can post each and every keystroke if nessacary. . . I'm driving cross country in a couple days .. so I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play .. but I'll try to track down what's going on.   thanks!

[corecoder]

I have a 4gig no-name brand. I partitioned it the same way you did and it works except for the 1.1g dos partition doesn't work thru my external card reader. It does work if I use a CF adapter and put it in the CF reader.

The ext2 partition probably doesn't work because of the block size. There was another thread here that stated you could 'mke2fs -b 1024 /dev/mmcda2' and it works, at least for me.

[loji]

Well I tried to change the bitsize of the ext2 partition ... and it's still giving me the same error .... I tried these same commands on a 1 gig SD card I had prior ot this,and it's working on that card ... so I think that the size is an issue .... the print option of fdisk shows that it's seeing 4 Gigs. however it shows 128704 cylinders while the 1 gig card shows 167680 cylinders ... that's because the size of each is much smaller on the 1 gig than the 4 gig. (12 * 512 as opposed to 64 * 512)

it's driving me a little batty ::  I can't figure out where it's having trouble.

I tried switching the order of the partitions .. making the primary 1 the ext2 and the second as vfat ... and now I am able to mount -t ext2 /dev/mmcda /mnt/ext2 fine ... however I get the same error when I try to do mount -t vfat /dev/mmcda2 /mnt/card   --- so it seems the end of the card isn't happy mounting ... grrr what causes this?

[Cresho]

guess it wont wwork with this card.  there are tons of hidden issues.

[loji]

do you mean issues with the driver ?  or with this version of fdisk? Sandisc Ultra cards are common enough I would assume they are supported

[Cresho]

Just saying that not all of them work.  Some people report great success while others fail.