Well considering that you don't need to backup your OS, since you can always reinstall it from the CD. And considering that you have to have a working system in the first place in order to backup anything useful, maybe you should at least try listening to the advise of a good majority of your responders, and change your partitioning scheme to something more "standard". Why don't you try letting RedHat install itself into the free space left on your drive. You can always resize your /home partition to make it 1 GB, and make some more 1 GB partitions on your first and second drive for storage. Or you could just limit the contents of each users /home directory to 1 GB, and then again use the second drive for additional storage space if needed. I just think that since a number of people have said that this might be your problem, that it will be worth your while to at least try it in the hopes of getting a working installation.
Jesse On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 12:12, Stanley A. Schultz wrote: > > Ian and All: > > Thanks for your interest. > > On Wed, 25 Sep 2002, Ian Bruseker wrote: > > > First off, if I may be so bold, that is some whacked partitioning you > > got going on there. ;-) I rarely get past 5 partitions before I get > > confused. > > 1. Having suffered system crashes in the past I have developed the habit > (some would say "fixation") of backing up everything on my machines at > least once a month. Data gets the treatment at least once a week. Because > my backup medium is a 1Gb Jaz drive. (I bought them before the 2 Gb units > were available and writable CDs were economical, and haven't had the spare > cash to correct the situation.) I tend to keep my partitions sized under > the 1 Gb size so I can make a direct copy of the source drives. (Formal > backup and archive programs tend to be far too cumbersome and complex for > such a basically simple operation. Also, it's impossible to restore > archived files once the system crashes without restoring the system first. > But you can't do that because the system is compressed or encoded on media > that you can't read until you can get an operating system and the > appropriate disencoding/uncompressing software up and running. And you > can't do that until you restore the system. And you can't restore the > system until you can get the operating system and the appropriate > disencoding/uncompressing software up and running. I'm developing a > migraine just thinking of the vicious circle!) > > 2. Keeping track of more than 5 partitions is actually quite easy. That's > what disk labels (e.g., EMAIL1, SCRATCH3, /home, /usr) are all about. > Computers think with C:, D:, F:, /dev/hda1, /dev/hdb5 (or their digital > equivalents) and largely ignore verbose labels except in an attempt to > understand mere humans. > > > Here's my thought on this, which may or may not be valid, but it's a > > thought: You've got a 40 GB drive in a P200. Are you sure it really > > works completely correctly? Does Windows see all 40 GB? > > 1. I failed to mention earlier that I was using Seagate's version of Disk > Manager to alter the BIOS so that the full 40Gb could be addressed. > > 2. Window$/DOS can't see ext2 partitions but does see, read and write to > all the FAT32 partitions up to the Linux ones. > > > My first P200 had a 1.7 GB, which I later upgraded to 6.4, and then I > > couldn't go beyond that without a BIOS upgrade, and even then I think > > the new limit was 32 GB. Your Linux partitions on that drive seem to be > > wayyyy near the end. They might be beyond the reach of the bios. The > > 2.4 GB hard drive seems to have nothing but Linux on it. Have you tried > > installing the entire RedHat installation to that drive, to see if that > > works? > > No. But that is an option that I'll consider if nothing else works. > > I also failed to mention that earlier I had this exact same version of > Linux from the exact same CDs running on the exact same machine with a > 10Gb disk instead of the 40Gb. The 10Gb disk crashed, so I got the 40 Gb > to replace it. The logical architecture of the drives (10 vs 40 Gb plus > 2.4 Gb) is almost identical in both installations. There are several > conclusions to be drawn from this: > > 1. All the hardware other than the 40 Gb disk was running okay before the > crash. Because Window$ is still running well (or at least as well as > Window$ ever does) and I can still run a brain damaged version of Linux, I > can only assume that everything is still okay. Hardware failure is > probably not an issue. > > 2. The most significant change has been the addition of the much larger > drive. However, the disk seems to be working properly under Window$ and > even partly okay under Linux, and Disk Manager is supposed to take care of > that (regardless of the OS) in the first place. Am I being too trusting? > > 3. Linux can read, write and execute limited files from the high end of > the 40Gb disk. The disk isn't inaccessible to Linux, at least the brain > damaged version that I can get running. Getting at that part of the big > disk doesn't seem to be a problem. > > One last item: It would appear that, during installation, Linux can write > to the root of any given partition but not to subdirectories. For > instance, I can see /usr (partition /hda17) but /usr/bin seems to be > empty. > > Peace, health, wisdom and wealth. Live long and prosper. > > > Stan Schultz > Techno-Geek wannabe > > Webpage: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~schultz > Home: (403) 230-1911 > Work: (403) 220-8570 > FAX: (403) 270-8928 >
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