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RootSmart.com Podcast|Rootsmart Podcast #39 6/14/06 Episode
Get It Now
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Email
Hi Joe,
I have one podcast (Sean Hannity) out of seven that won't download/update since 4/19/06 in itunes.
Any advice on how make it download?
Many Thanks,
Scott
Joe;
Maybe you can help me out with this. I need a decent bootloader program. I want to have three or four operating systems on the same computer. I have one entire drive dedicated to windows. I would like to have another drive with two or three partitions for Linux distros. Partitioning is no problem but getting the operating systems from stomping all over the bootloader is another problem. For example, when I install Ubuntu, it wipes out SuSE and vice verse. They are both on the hard drive but each one kicks the other out of the boot process. I don't know how to resolve this in the install process.
While listening to another podcast I discovered a couple of things. There are bootloader programs so that I can choose which OS to load. I knew this but it never occurred to me till I heard it on the other podcast. Second, Ubuntu 6.06 does not give an option to put the boot loader on the partition it is on. As a result it generates its own MBR, therefore making the separate boot loader program problematic. I suppose I could only put the boot loader program CD in only when I wanted to boot to other systems than Ubuntu. I think there must be a way to edit the boot.ini file in Windows but I am not to sure how it is done.
So here is the questions, can you recommend a third party boot loader program, I know System Commander is good but I have to pay for that, free would be better but not essential. I don't want to use a floppy so I have to be able to do it from CD? Next, any suggestions on the Ubuntu 6.06 conundrum? Are there other choices to accomplish this that I don't know about.
By the way the podcast I was listening to was Linux Reality, it is very good. I am sure you have heard it.
Looking forward to your next podcast.
Thanks;
Charlie
Content
Today we are talking about partitions and disks in Linux
Disks are not handled in the same way that Windows handles disks
In linux disks are handled as mount points
So in windows you have drives C:, D: whatever
in linux you have mount points
So lets say you have two partitions, A and B
You want your home folder to be on a seperate partition, A
so you set the mount point of partition A to be /home
so you can be using your home folder without ever realizing it is a seperate
drive
this makes the use of other drives very transparent
so to see what drives you have plugged in, we need to check a file
the file is located in the /etc directory called fstab
this will have lines that look like
/dev/hda1 / ext2 defaults, errors=remount-ro 0 1
ok so you don't need to worry about the stuff after ext 2
the first thing says the device
in this case it is the first partition on the first channel of the master IDE
channel
hd means it is a IDE drive
a means it is the Master channel on the 1st IDE channel
the 1 is the partition
if you want the drive on the slave on the first IDE channel you can go to hdb
as for sata drives, you get sd drives
sd stood for SCSI
now sata runs on the same devices as SCSI
this uses the same scheme
the next entry in the fstab is the /
that is the mount point, this is loaded at the root
and the next is ext2 that is the filesystem
ext2 and ext3 are very common
so now we are going to go over partitioning
a lot of the times, I recommend this to be done graphically
you don't want to make a mistake, and a typo could be a massive mistake
but we are focusing on command line, so let me show you how to do this
I am going to assume that we are working on the HDA drive
so to see what is on the HDA drive type fdisk /dev/hda
this will print out the amount of cylinders and all kinds of other info
the cylinders are used mainly for size, but don't worry too much about it
so first lets go over deleting partitions
type fdisk /dev/hda
then at the prompt type p
this gets you a reference
now type d
and choose a partition to delete
now we want to create a new partition
type n
choose extended or primary
you probably want primary
the reason for this is that standard PCs only allow four partitions
these are primary partitions
if you want/need more you need to create extended partitionso
so now at the number field type in that same number that you deleted
now at the cylinder, choose how large, so you can do +5000M to create
something that is 5 gigs
now type t
this will ask what is the Hex code and if this is a linux partition choose 83
if it is a swamp file choose 82
now type p
you should see everything all right
now this is the big step
no changes have been written yet
so, make sure you know what you are doing
now type w
and you are done
since we are on drives, let me go over filesystems
filesystems are the way that a OS will find files, and information on those
files on the drive
Linux supports hundreds of file systems but here are the most common
ext2 is a ver fast filesystem, that defragments itself
its newer cousin is ext3 which is fast and defragments and also is journaled
journaled means that if your system crahses, or has an abrupt stop, such as
when you pull the cord
it probably wont' lose any data
ISO9660 is what is used on all CDs
FAT is a very common filesystem that can be read by OS X, Windows, and Linux
ResiserFs is a new filesystem optimized for smaller files
it is used by SuSe heavily
so you can't mount the partition you just created yet
it needs a filesystem
to do this we say mke2fs -j /dev/hda1
you then put it what partition you want
the j option makes it ext3
ok so if you want to mount this drive in the /home directory
you would type mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /home/
the -t ext3 chooses what filesystem
to unmount this type unmount /home/
That is drives in Linux for you
one more of these and then we are done for the linux for a while
[ Thu, 15 Jun 2006 21:29:59 -0400 ]
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