Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-21 Thread Neil Bothwick
On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:35:44 +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

 Anyway, you don't need to add something to remind you 
 of the partition's position; /etc/mtab will use regular device names,
 so you can see what's going on with 'cat /etc/mtab' or simply 'mount' 
 without parameters.

cfdisk also shows the labels against the partition names.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Don't use a long word if a diminutive one will do.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Alan Mackenzie
Hi, Nikos!

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:29:19AM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
 The default in new kernels is to only use /dev/sd*.

 I'm totally confused.  Doesn't sd* mean SCSI disk drive?  When I was
 installing Gentoo from the CD, I had to mount my main hard drive as
 /dev/sdb5.  When I built my own kernel, it needed /dev/hdh5.

 This seems crazy.  Is it documented anywhere in Gentoo?

 Not sure.  But if you have /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*, it means you 
 configured your kernel with the legacy IDE drivers instead of the new 
 (P)ATA drivers.  The new drivers use /dev/sd* (for IDE/PATA/SATA and 
 SCSI alike; there's no difference anymore.)

This was indeed the case.

 The CD/DVD-ROM can show up as /dev/sd* even with the old legacy drivers 
 if you have enable SCSI Emulation for it.

 In any event, try to build a new kernel using the new drivers.  The old 
 legacy driver you're using will probably get declared deprecated at 
 some point (if it didn't happen already).

[ Detailed instructions snipped - but they were appreciated and followed
:-]

Did this.  It mapped my two hard drives (previously /dev/hd[gh]) to
/dev/sd[ab], and created /dev/sda, dev/sda1, .  So far, so good.

However, it hadn't created /dev/sda16 or /dev/sda17 for some reason.  A
quick # ls -l /dev/sd{a15,b} gives:

... 8, 15  /dev/sda15
... 8, 16  /dev/sdb

In a philosophical mood, one might say that the new unified,
enhanced, better IDE support is inadequate for my setup.  What I
actually said, I'm not going to repeat in a public mailing list.

So the kernel guys have decided that nobody would ever want more than 15
partitions on a drive.  It's a bit like the old MS-DOS restriction to 512
MB all over again.  Hey, guys, hard drives nowadays are like 200 gig, not
512meg.  What's so wrong about having partitions with sizes 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb,
with maybe 100Mb for a boot partition?

Generic ATA support

 unless you can't find a native driver for your chipset (I doubt you have 
 some extremely rare/exotic mainboard ;)

The HPT370A UDMA100 chip (with my two hard drives) was no problem.  For
the VIA VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C ordinary IDE chip (the one
with my two DVD drives attached), I tried configuring VIA, which
didn't work.  Then I rebuilt the kernel again with Generic ATA
support, which didn't work either.

Both of these created /dev/sdc and /dev/sdc1, but no /dev/sdd.  When I
tried # mount -t iso9660 /dev/sdc /cdrom, I got the something's gone
wrong, but we're not telling you what error message.  Trying to mount
/dev/sdc1 gave exactly the same result.  Actually, thinking about it,
this was probably my USB stick it was trying to access.

Nikos, do you happen to know the appropriate kernel mailing list where I
could express the opinion that restricting the number of partitions on a
drive to 15 isn't a good tradeoff?

All in all, I really amn't impressed with this modern drive support.
Besides quartering the max number of partitions on a drive, it confuses
IDE and SCSI drives, thus confusing me, too.  Previously, when I
attached devices to the IDE1 socket, I knew they would appear at
/dev/hd[cd].  Now, it would seem, the kernel assigns drives at random to
/dev/sd[abcd...], so you can only determine by experiment which devices
are at which device.  Nothing personal, Nikos.  ;-)

I think I need to go back to the traditional IDE handling.

None of the Gentoo kernels I've built have even seen my two DVD drives,
yet.  I'll get there, somehow.

Thanks!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Mick
On Sunday 20 July 2008, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

 So the kernel guys have decided that nobody would ever want more than 15
 partitions on a drive.  

From memory I recall that this has always been the limit for SATA/SCSI drives.  
For ATA drives I think it is 63?

Not sure if this is a Linux OS kernel restriction - what is the maximum number 
that MSWindows see?  I would think it is the same.
-- 
Regards,
Mick


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Neil Bothwick
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 15:05:10 +, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

 So the kernel guys have decided that nobody would ever want more than 15
 partitions on a drive.  It's a bit like the old MS-DOS restriction to
 512 MB all over again.  Hey, guys, hard drives nowadays are like 200
 gig, not 512meg.  What's so wrong about having partitions with sizes
 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb, with maybe 100Mb for a boot partition?

Nothing, which is why the kernel includes LVM, allowing you to have many
more filesystems on a disk.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

c:Press Enter to Exit


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Alan Mackenzie
Hi, Mick,

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 06:22:23PM +0100, Mick wrote:
 On Sunday 20 July 2008, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

  So the kernel guys have decided that nobody would ever want more than 15
  partitions on a drive.  

 From memory I recall that this has always been the limit for SATA/SCSI
 drives.  For ATA drives I think it is 63?

If I do # ls -l /dev/hd[gh], I get:

brw-rw  1 root disk 34,  0 2005-02-26 06:43 /dev/hdg
brw-rw  1 root disk 34, 64 2005-02-26 06:43 /dev/hdh

, which does indeed suggest a max of 63.  However, there's nothing on the
disk partition structure (which is basically a chain of extended
partitions across the entire disk) to limit this.

 Not sure if this is a Linux OS kernel restriction - what is the maximum 
 number 
 that MSWindows see?

What's MSWindows?  ;-)

Proabably a lot less than 63.

However, the limit of 15 (which I didn't know about before) is a good
reason for me not to migrate to SATA disks.  I _like_ having lots of
partitions ~1 - 4 Gb.  It was trivial for me to clear a 4 Gb partition
for a trial installation of Gentoo (which, by the way, I'm expecting to
expand into my prime system - my Debian Sarge is beginning to feel very
tired).

Shoe horning IDE disks into the S{ATA,CSI}'s 15 partition limit seems an
unkind thing to do.

 Mick

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).



[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Mick wrote:

[...]
What would be the recommended way of upgrading from the /dev/hd to /dev/sd 
then?  I have held back doing this because I didn't have the time to mess 
about with it.  If I were to configure a new kernel without legacy ATA 
drivers, how would I know what my devices will be seen as in advance, so that 
I can change my /etc/fstab before I reboot?


The way I do it, is to label my partitions.  If your partitions aren't 
labeled yet, you can do so with 'tune2fs'.  If your /dev/hda1 is your 
root (/), /dev/hda2 your /home and /dev/hda3 your swap, you can label 
them with:


  tune2fs -L GentooRoot /dev/hda1
  tune2fs -L GentooHome /dev/hda2
  mkswap -L GentooSwap /dev/hda3

Then edit /etc/fstab and change the mount points from:

  /dev/hda1 ...
  /dev/hda2 ...
  /dev/hda3 ...

to:

  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot
  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooHome
  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooSwap

As reference, here the relevant entries in my own /etc/fstab:

  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot /  ext3noatime 0 1
  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooSwap none   swapsw  0 0
  /dev/disk/by-label/Suckage/windows/C ntfs-3g noatime 0 0

As you can see this even works for NTFS; you use the label you gave the 
drive in Windows.


After you've done these changes, it doesn't matter the least anymore 
what the actual device name is.  You can even move the harddisk to 
another computer (actually I'm doing exactly that) that totally results 
in a re-ordering of /dev/sd* entries and it will still mount correctly.





Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Dale

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Mick wrote:

[...]
What would be the recommended way of upgrading from the /dev/hd to 
/dev/sd then?  I have held back doing this because I didn't have the 
time to mess about with it.  If I were to configure a new kernel 
without legacy ATA drivers, how would I know what my devices will be 
seen as in advance, so that I can change my /etc/fstab before I reboot?


The way I do it, is to label my partitions.  If your partitions aren't 
labeled yet, you can do so with 'tune2fs'.  If your /dev/hda1 is your 
root (/), /dev/hda2 your /home and /dev/hda3 your swap, you can label 
them with:


  tune2fs -L GentooRoot /dev/hda1
  tune2fs -L GentooHome /dev/hda2
  mkswap -L GentooSwap /dev/hda3

Then edit /etc/fstab and change the mount points from:

  /dev/hda1 ...
  /dev/hda2 ...
  /dev/hda3 ...

to:

  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot
  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooHome
  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooSwap

As reference, here the relevant entries in my own /etc/fstab:

  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot /  ext3noatime 0 1
  /dev/disk/by-label/GentooSwap none   swapsw  0 0
  /dev/disk/by-label/Suckage/windows/C ntfs-3g noatime 0 0

As you can see this even works for NTFS; you use the label you gave 
the drive in Windows.


After you've done these changes, it doesn't matter the least anymore 
what the actual device name is.  You can even move the harddisk to 
another computer (actually I'm doing exactly that) that totally 
results in a re-ordering of /dev/sd* entries and it will still mount 
correctly.






Question, if I were to label mine and then boot from a Gentoo or any 
other bootable CD, would those labels still be there?


Dale

:-)  :-) 



[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Dale wrote:

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Mick wrote:

[...]
What would be the recommended way of upgrading from the /dev/hd to 
/dev/sd then?  I have held back doing this because I didn't have the 
time to mess about with it.  If I were to configure a new kernel 
without legacy ATA drivers, how would I know what my devices will be 
seen as in advance, so that I can change my /etc/fstab before I reboot?


The way I do it, is to label my partitions.  If your partitions aren't 
labeled yet, you can do so with 'tune2fs'.  If your /dev/hda1 is your 
root (/), /dev/hda2 your /home and /dev/hda3 your swap, you can label 
them with:


  tune2fs -L GentooRoot /dev/hda1
  tune2fs -L GentooHome /dev/hda2
  mkswap -L GentooSwap /dev/hda3
[...]


Question, if I were to label mine and then boot from a Gentoo or any 
other bootable CD, would those labels still be there?


The labels are part of the file system; they're always there.  For 
example, when booting the 2007.0 LiveDVD (which uses the legacy drivers, 
meaning /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*) the labels are there and I can 
mount /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot just fine.





Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Dale

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Dale wrote:

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Mick wrote:

[...]
What would be the recommended way of upgrading from the /dev/hd to 
/dev/sd then?  I have held back doing this because I didn't have 
the time to mess about with it.  If I were to configure a new 
kernel without legacy ATA drivers, how would I know what my devices 
will be seen as in advance, so that I can change my /etc/fstab 
before I reboot?


The way I do it, is to label my partitions.  If your partitions 
aren't labeled yet, you can do so with 'tune2fs'.  If your /dev/hda1 
is your root (/), /dev/hda2 your /home and /dev/hda3 your swap, you 
can label them with:


  tune2fs -L GentooRoot /dev/hda1
  tune2fs -L GentooHome /dev/hda2
  mkswap -L GentooSwap /dev/hda3
[...]


Question, if I were to label mine and then boot from a Gentoo or any 
other bootable CD, would those labels still be there?


The labels are part of the file system; they're always there.  For 
example, when booting the 2007.0 LiveDVD (which uses the legacy 
drivers, meaning /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*) the labels are there 
and I can mount /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot just fine.






Kwl.  Now to see what I can screw up.  o_O

Dale

:-)  :-)



[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Alan Mackenzie wrote:

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:29:19AM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
The CD/DVD-ROM can show up as /dev/sd* even with the old legacy drivers 
if you have enable SCSI Emulation for it.


In any event, try to build a new kernel using the new drivers.  The old 
legacy driver you're using will probably get declared deprecated at 
some point (if it didn't happen already).

[...]
In a philosophical mood, one might say that the new unified,
enhanced, better IDE support is inadequate for my setup.  What I
actually said, I'm not going to repeat in a public mailing list.


I must admit that I'm not affected much by this since, as I mentioned in 
another post, I use labels and don't look at what /dev/sd* my drive is 
mapped.


For unpartitioned drivers where I'm not sure which /dev/sd* entry to 
use, I simply use /dev/disk/by-id instead ;)




So the kernel guys have decided that nobody would ever want more than 15
partitions on a drive.  It's a bit like the old MS-DOS restriction to 512
MB all over again.  Hey, guys, hard drives nowadays are like 200 gig, not
512meg.  What's so wrong about having partitions with sizes 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb,
with maybe 100Mb for a boot partition?


Unlike the above, this one is a real problem.  Fortunately, as long as 
the new drivers are still labeled experimental there's little chance 
of the legacy drivers being removed from the kernel.  Performance-wise, 
I don't think you're missing much by not using the new drivers (though 
that's just a guess; don't take my word on it :P)


If some day the legacy drivers are kicked out, you might have to go the 
LVM route by force :P  But I guess this isn't like to happen anytime 
soon now, since not all hardware seems supported by the new drivers.




Both of these created /dev/sdc and /dev/sdc1, but no /dev/sdd.  When I
tried # mount -t iso9660 /dev/sdc /cdrom, I got the something's gone
wrong, but we're not telling you what error message.  Trying to mount
/dev/sdc1 gave exactly the same result.  Actually, thinking about it,
this was probably my USB stick it was trying to access.


I know that everyone is using his/her own system as he/she sees fit, but 
I don't mount CD/DVD and USB drives by hand anymore.  And no entries at 
all in fstab either.  I just plug it in and let dbus (+ HAL if you're on 
KDE/Gnome) handle the rest :P




Nikos, do you happen to know the appropriate kernel mailing list where I
could express the opinion that restricting the number of partitions on a
drive to 15 isn't a good tradeoff?


LKML should be OK.  At least last time I checked, regulars there are 
against directing people to more appropriate lists, meaning that LKML 
is the most appropriate of all if the issue is about things that are 
officially in the kernel.


In any event, I remember this issue being raised back in 2004, so I 
guess it has been discussed to death by now.  (And I did not follow the 
discussion, so I can't give you a summary, I'm afraid.  Google is your 
friend.)




All in all, I really amn't impressed with this modern drive support.
Besides quartering the max number of partitions on a drive, it confuses
IDE and SCSI drives, thus confusing me, too.  Previously, when I
attached devices to the IDE1 socket, I knew they would appear at
/dev/hd[cd].  Now, it would seem, the kernel assigns drives at random to
/dev/sd[abcd...], so you can only determine by experiment which devices
are at which device.  Nothing personal, Nikos.  ;-)


I'm on PATA+SATA+USB here, so I know what you mean.  However, I found 
the /dev/disk/ tree to be very helpful here.





Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Mick
On Sunday 20 July 2008, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
 Dale wrote:
  Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
  Mick wrote:
  [...]
  What would be the recommended way of upgrading from the /dev/hd to
  /dev/sd then?  I have held back doing this because I didn't have the
  time to mess about with it.  If I were to configure a new kernel
  without legacy ATA drivers, how would I know what my devices will be
  seen as in advance, so that I can change my /etc/fstab before I reboot?
 
  The way I do it, is to label my partitions.  If your partitions aren't
  labeled yet, you can do so with 'tune2fs'.  If your /dev/hda1 is your
  root (/), /dev/hda2 your /home and /dev/hda3 your swap, you can label
  them with:
 
tune2fs -L GentooRoot /dev/hda1
tune2fs -L GentooHome /dev/hda2
mkswap -L GentooSwap /dev/hda3
  [...]
 
  Question, if I were to label mine and then boot from a Gentoo or any
  other bootable CD, would those labels still be there?

 The labels are part of the file system; they're always there.  For
 example, when booting the 2007.0 LiveDVD (which uses the legacy drivers,
 meaning /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*) the labels are there and I can
 mount /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot just fine.

Yes, labels . . . been thinking of doing this for the last two years!  I guess 
I will have to use reiserfstune for my reiserfs partitions.  What about xfs - 
will xfsprogs do it?

Thanks for the tip.  The thing with the conventional device numbering system 
is that you know which one is first, which second, etc.  With Labels I'll 
have to add something to it to remind myself that this is the first 
partition, etc.  Can I have blank spaces in the Label name?
-- 
Regards,
Mick


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[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Dale wrote:

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Dale wrote:

[...]
Question, if I were to label mine and then boot from a Gentoo or any 
other bootable CD, would those labels still be there?


The labels are part of the file system; they're always there.  For 
example, when booting the 2007.0 LiveDVD (which uses the legacy 
drivers, meaning /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*) the labels are there 
and I can mount /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot just fine.


Kwl.  Now to see what I can screw up.  o_O


I should mention here the old Indian* saying: If it ain't broke, don't 
fix it.



*OK, it's not Indian, but you get the idea.




Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Dale

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Dale wrote:

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

Dale wrote:

[...]
Question, if I were to label mine and then boot from a Gentoo or 
any other bootable CD, would those labels still be there?


The labels are part of the file system; they're always there.  For 
example, when booting the 2007.0 LiveDVD (which uses the legacy 
drivers, meaning /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*) the labels are there 
and I can mount /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot just fine.


Kwl.  Now to see what I can screw up.  o_O


I should mention here the old Indian* saying: If it ain't broke, 
don't fix it.



*OK, it's not Indian, but you get the idea.





True but I have trouble remembering which partition is home and which is 
portage, until I mount them anyway.  It's obvious then. 

I guess according to another reply that I will have to use something 
else for resierfs.  I guess it can't hurt to much.  Worst thing is to 
have to boot and edit fstab back to the old way.  :/


Dale

:-)  :-) 



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Dale

Dale wrote:



True but I have trouble remembering which partition is home and which 
is portage, until I mount them anyway.  It's obvious then.
I guess according to another reply that I will have to use something 
else for resierfs.  I guess it can't hurt to much.  Worst thing is to 
have to boot and edit fstab back to the old way.  :/


Dale

:-)  :-)



Well bummer, you have to umount it first.  O_O  That sucks.  Somebody 
tell me it ain't so.


Dale

:-)  :-)



[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Dale wrote:

Dale wrote:
True but I have trouble remembering which partition is home and which 
is portage, until I mount them anyway.  It's obvious then.
I guess according to another reply that I will have to use something 
else for resierfs.  I guess it can't hurt to much.  Worst thing is to 
have to boot and edit fstab back to the old way.  :/


Well bummer, you have to umount it first.  O_O  That sucks.  Somebody 
tell me it ain't so.


It is so ;P

Best simply boot from the live CD and change the labels there, mount the 
root partition, change fstab right there and reboot.





[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-20 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Mick wrote:

On Sunday 20 July 2008, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

The labels are part of the file system; they're always there.  For
example, when booting the 2007.0 LiveDVD (which uses the legacy drivers,
meaning /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*) the labels are there and I can
mount /dev/disk/by-label/GentooRoot just fine.


Yes, labels . . . been thinking of doing this for the last two years!  I guess 
I will have to use reiserfstune for my reiserfs partitions.  What about xfs - 
will xfsprogs do it?


The xfs_admin is used to change the label of XFS partitions: 
http://linux.die.net/man/8/xfs_admin



Thanks for the tip.  The thing with the conventional device numbering system 
is that you know which one is first, which second, etc.  With Labels I'll 
have to add something to it to remind myself that this is the first 
partition, etc.  Can I have blank spaces in the Label name?


I don't think spaces are allowed.  But you can use underscores or 
capitalization.  Anyway, you don't need to add something to remind you 
of the partition's position; /etc/mtab will use regular device names, so 
you can see what's going on with 'cat /etc/mtab' or simply 'mount' 
without parameters.  On my system, even though I use labels, I get this 
with 'mount':


  /dev/sdc1 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
  /dev/sda1 on /windows/C type fuseblk 
(rw,noatime,allow_other,blksize=4096)





[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-19 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Alan Mackenzie wrote:

Hi, Gentoo?

I've a newly installed system, now working with my own special
optimiesed keyboard layout.  :-)

However, I can't access my DVD drives.  I know at least one of them
works, because I installed Gentoo from it.

When I do

   mount -tiso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom

, it comes back with special device /dev/hdc does not exist.  And yes,
there was a CD in the drive, and /cdrom exists.

What does special device mean here?  Does it mean the physcial
hardware, the controller chip, the directory entry /dev/hdc, the driver
in the kernel, or what?  What is special about my DVD writer?


/dev/hdc (and other files in /dev) are not called files, they're 
called special devices).




Well, to answer some of my questions, I was missing a /dev/hdc, so I
made one with

# mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0

.  This didn't help one iota.  I had a look at dmesg, but there was no
mention of hdc in it.  (It did mention hdg, hdh, where my main hard
drives are (don't ask!)).


Use /dev/sdc instead of /dev/hdc.  The default in new kernels is to only 
use /dev/sd*.


--
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list



[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-19 Thread Miernik
Alan Mackenzie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 # mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0
 
 This didn't help one iota.  I had a look at dmesg, but there was no
 mention of hdc in it.  (It did mention hdg, hdh, where my main hard
 drives are (don't ask!)).

Maybe there was some /dev/sda /dev/sdb or something similar?
Why do you assume your drive is under /dev/hdx and not /dev/sdx ?

-- 
Miernik
http://miernik.name/

-- 
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-19 Thread Alan Mackenzie
Hi, Nikos,

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 10:06:15PM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
 Alan Mackenzie wrote:

 However, I can't access my DVD drives.  I know at least one of them
 works, because I installed Gentoo from it.

 When I do

mount -tiso9660 /dev/hdc /cdrom

 , it comes back with special device /dev/hdc does not exist.  And yes,
 there was a CD in the drive, and /cdrom exists.

 What does special device mean here?  Does it mean the physcial
 hardware, the controller chip, the directory entry /dev/hdc, the driver
 in the kernel, or what?  What is special about my DVD writer?

 /dev/hdc (and other files in /dev) are not called files, they're 
 called special devices).

Ah!  I really wish they weren't.  Didn't they used to be called device
files?

 Well, to answer some of my questions, I was missing a /dev/hdc, so I
 made one with

 # mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0

 .  This didn't help one iota.  I had a look at dmesg, but there was no
 mention of hdc in it.  (It did mention hdg, hdh, where my main hard
 drives are (don't ask!)).

 Use /dev/sdc instead of /dev/hdc.

I booted up in to the kernel, did # ls /dev/sd*, and the only things
displayed were /dev/sda and /dev/sda1.  That is the place where my USB
stick gets mounted.

 The default in new kernels is to only use /dev/sd*.

I'm totally confused.  Doesn't sd* mean SCSI disk drive?  When I was
installing Gentoo from the CD, I had to mount my main hard drive as
/dev/sdb5.  When I built my own kernel, it needed /dev/hdh5.

This seems crazy.  Is it documented anywhere in Gentoo?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).



Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-19 Thread Alan Mackenzie
Hi, Miernik,

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 09:13:09PM +0200, Miernik wrote:
 Alan Mackenzie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  # mknod /dev/hdc b 22 0

  This didn't help one iota.  I had a look at dmesg, but there was no
  mention of hdc in it.  (It did mention hdg, hdh, where my main hard
  drives are (don't ask!)).

 Maybe there was some /dev/sda /dev/sdb or something similar?

There's /dev/sda and /dev/sda1, and no other /dev/sd*.  That's where my
UBS stick gets mounted.

 Why do you assume your drive is under /dev/hdx and not /dev/sdx ?

Er, because it's an IDE drive, and on my old Debian system it appears at
/dev/hdc.  My HDD is at /dev/hdh on both old Debian and new Gentoo.

When I do an lspci -v, on my Gentoo system, this shows up for hd[cd]:

00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) (prog-if 8a 
[Master SecP PriP])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
VT82C586/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
[virtual] Memory at 01f0 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8]
[virtual] Memory at 03f0 (type 3, non-prefetchable) [size=1]
[virtual] Memory at 0170 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8]
[virtual] Memory at 0370 (type 3, non-prefetchable) [size=1]
I/O ports at a400 [size=16]
Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

This suggests that the IDE controller has been initialised properly, but
the kernel has ignored it.

 -- 
 Miernik
 http://miernik.name/

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany)



[gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-19 Thread Nikos Chantziaras

Alan Mackenzie wrote:

The default in new kernels is to only use /dev/sd*.


I'm totally confused.  Doesn't sd* mean SCSI disk drive?  When I was
installing Gentoo from the CD, I had to mount my main hard drive as
/dev/sdb5.  When I built my own kernel, it needed /dev/hdh5.

This seems crazy.  Is it documented anywhere in Gentoo?


Not sure.  But if you have /dev/hd* instead of /dev/sd*, it means you 
configured your kernel with the legacy IDE drivers instead of the new 
(P)ATA drivers.  The new drivers use /dev/sd* (for IDE/PATA/SATA and 
SCSI alike; there's no difference anymore.)


The CD/DVD-ROM can show up as /dev/sd* even with the old legacy drivers 
if you have enable SCSI Emulation for it.


In any event, try to build a new kernel using the new drivers.  The old 
legacy driver you're using will probably get declared deprecated at 
some point (if it didn't happen already).


To enable the new drivers, first disable the legacy drivers.  (Device 
Drivers section):


  ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support  ---

Now enable the new drivers:

   * Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers  ---

Enter that section and pick your chipset.  Don't enable the:

   Generic ATA support

unless you can't find a native driver for your chipset (I doubt you have 
some extremely rare/exotic mainboard ;)





Re: [gentoo-user] Re: mount: special device /dev/hdc does not exist. What does this mean?

2008-07-19 Thread Graham Murray
Alan Mackenzie [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 There's /dev/sda and /dev/sda1, and no other /dev/sd*.  That's where my
 UBS stick gets mounted.

What about any /dev/sr*?