On Mon Aug 03 1998, Alain Rabaute wrote:
> On a 800 Mb disk, I had two partition: /dev/hda1 was a 300mb OS/2
> partition, and /dev/hda2 was a 500 mb Linux native partition.
>
> I would like to remove completely the OS2 partition and create instead a
> Linux partition.
>
> Firstly, if I do 'fdisk', I do not know how I can 'format' /dev/hda1 !
fdisk /dev/hda
Then change the partition type to (hex) 83 (linux).
> I tried to delete it, but then, when I create a new one, do I have to
> choose 'extended' or 'primary' type (I guess it is extended, but not
> sure) ?
It worries me that you don't know the difference between a primary and an
extended partition. Read the documentation that comes with fdisk, mke2fs
and lilo (and whatever else you might find relevant to the subject).
> Then, when I write the information about the partition table, it says
> something bad, that it was not capable of creating it, this kind of
> thing.
Hmmm...
> I tried also 'mkfs -t ext2', but then it says t hat I do not have enough
> space ! My disk space available is 307 blocks however !
You can only ext2-format a valid linux parition, and if you got errors
attempting to write an invalid parition type you would probably get an
error to this effect.
> I am completely lost. I guess I have to do something before creating
> anything, but don't know what. Somebody help me ?? thanks in advance.
Go through lots of man pages, package documentation, and the Linux HOWTO
documents. It seems that you really need to do this to learn exactly what
you are doing.
The short answer to your problem is to use fdisk to change the partition
type to either linux primary, or linux/dos extended (probably a primary
partition, unless you intend to create smaller partitions within an
extended partition). THEN format the partition, mount it, and away you go!
Cheers
Tony
