> that this is related to fdisk. i used the s option and made it whole drive. > i then partitioned the sdb as sdb1 sdb2 sdb3, with ext2 partitions. they > mount fine.
If I have understood well your description, you have correctly created the "whole disk" /dev/sdb3 partition on sdb. What is wrong is that the /dev/sdb3 partition must NOT be formatted! To properly partition your hd, you should: 1. Run fdisk. Press "s". This creates 3 partitions: /dev/sdb1 (type: ext2), /dev/sdb2 (type: swap), and /dev/sdb3 (type: whole disk). 2. Now you can alter your partition table, add new partitions, move or resize them (of course, to do so, you must first delete /dev/sdb1 and/or /dev/sdb2 and then create new partitions of the desired size). However, never, never touch /dev/sdb3! 3. If you add new partitions, they will be /dev/sdb4, /dev/sdb5, etc. > a peer of mine (very MCSE but working to change) suggested that i fdisk with > a different disty (like redhat) then put debian on the existing partitions > from that fdisk. the reason he said this is from his experience(small) of > having debian fdisk bork on sparc. Your MCSE peer is wrong. This is Linux, not Windows! > another peer (heavy *nix experience) > said just put redhat on it and be done, i refrained from smacking him. Redhat has been on my first Sparc just one day! And it was more than enough... :-))) Bye Sabino
