Creating filesystems. ((Solved))

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rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:23 pm

I am totally confused on the whole Creating Filesystems topic... Can someone help me out as I am at that stage of the installation?

asiB4 · Post by **asiB4** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:36 pm

what are you confused about? have you checked out the handbook...the different types of filesystems are explained there.

4.d. Creating Filesystems

Introduction

Now that your partitions are created, it is time to place a filesystem on them. If you don't care about what filesystem to choose and are happy with what we use as default in this handbook, continue with Applying a Filesystem to a Partition. Otherwise read on to learn about the available filesystems...

Filesystems?

The Linux kernel supports various filesystems. We'll explain ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, XFS and JFS as these are the most commonly used filesystems on Linux systems.

ext2 is the tried and true Linux filesystem but doesn't have metadata journaling, which means that routine ext2 filesystem checks at startup time can be quite time-consuming. There is now quite a selection of newer-generation journaled filesystems that can be checked for consistency very quickly and are thus generally preferred over their non-journaled counterparts. Journaled filesystems prevent long delays when you boot your system and your filesystem happens to be in an inconsistent state.

ext3 is the journaled version of the ext2 filesystem, providing metadata journaling for fast recovery in addition to other enhanced journaling modes like full data and ordered data journaling. ext3 is a very good and reliable filesystem. It has an additional hashed b-tree indexing option that enables high performance in almost all situations. You can enable this indexing by adding -O dir_index to the mke2fs command. In short, ext3 is an excellent filesystem.

ReiserFS is a B*-tree based filesystem that has very good overall performance and greatly outperforms both ext2 and ext3 when dealing with small files (files less than 4k), often by a factor of 10x-15x. ReiserFS also scales extremely well and has metadata journaling. As of kernel 2.4.18+, ReiserFS is solid and usable as both general-purpose filesystem and for extreme cases such as the creation of large filesystems, the use of many small files, very large files and directories containing tens of thousands of files.

XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling which comes with a robust feature-set and is optimized for scalability. We only recommend using this filesystem on Linux systems with high-end SCSI and/or fibre channel storage and an uninterruptible power supply. Because XFS aggressively caches in-transit data in RAM, improperly designed programs (those that don't take proper precautions when writing files to disk and there are quite a few of them) can lose a good deal of data if the system goes down unexpectedly.

JFS is IBM's high-performance journaling filesystem. It has recently become production-ready and there hasn't been a sufficient track record to comment positively nor negatively on its general stability at this point.

Applying a Filesystem to a Partition

To create a filesystem on a partition or volume, there are tools available for each possible filesystem:
Filesystem Creation Command
ext2-->mke2fs
ext3-->mke2fs -j
reiserfs-->mkreiserfs
xfs-->mkfs.xfs
jfs-->mkfs.jfs

For instance, to have the boot partition (/dev/hda1 in our example) in ext2 and the root partition (/dev/hda3 in our example) in ext3 (as in our example), you would use:

Code Listing 12: Applying a filesystem on a partition

# mke2fs /dev/hda1
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda3

Now create the filesystems on your newly created partitions (or logical volumes).

Cl9ytoN · Post by **Cl9ytoN** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:36 pm

Read the manual, it is all explained. You can chose between different filesystems.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:37 pm

Yes but how do I code them?

aaronf0 · Post by **aaronf0** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:37 pm

yes, where are you confused at? the partitioning? making the filesystem is as easy as just formating the partition with whatever format you want (probably ext3 or reiserfs)

do you need help making partitions or picking a fs type, or something else?

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:42 pm

The coding for the file systems.

Like the guide sais "Now create the filesystems on your newly created partitions (or logical volumes"

How do I do that?

asiB4 · Post by **asiB4** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 6:51 pm

rakeyry wrote:The coding for the file systems.

Like the guide sais "Now create the filesystems on your newly created partitions (or logical volumes"

How do I do that?

Depends on what filesystem you are going to use....for example...

Code: Select all

#mke2fs /dev/hda1 ----> creates an ext2 fs on the first partition on hda
#mke2fs -j /dev/hda3 ----> creates an ext3 fs on the 3rd partition of hda
#mkreiserfs /dev/hda6 ----> creates a reiser fs on partition 6 of hda

the quote in my first post..if you read it...shows that same info and how to do it, I'll highlight in red what I am talking about (see my first post). What documentation are you reading...the docs I have are more thurough than that.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 10:49 pm

the manual says to do the following:

# mke2fs /dev/hda1
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda3

but i got an error message. the message is:

could not stat /dev/hda1 --- no such file or directory.

the device apparently does not exist; did you specify it correctly?

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 10:58 pm

Hi.

How did you partition your disks? Look at the output of fdisk -l.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:06 pm

i partitioned according to the manual with 3 partitions:

the boot partition, the swap partition and the root partition.

how do i look at the output of the fdisk

ih8u · Post by **ih8u** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:20 pm

fdisk -l

that is how you see the output of fdisk

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:31 pm

Okay when i type that, here is what I get.

Disk dev/hdb: 40GB. 40020664320 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors / track , 5169 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120*512 - 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
dev/hdb1 * 1 5169 39077608+ C was Fat 32 (LBA)

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:40 pm

Well, you seem to have a single 40GB disk, configured as slave in the first IDE channel. The disk seems also to be filled with your Windows FAT32 partition. Unless you have another disk or are willing to resize the windows partition, you won't be able to install Gentoo.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:41 pm

Okay. So what do I do from here? I don't mind totally getting rid of Windows. I have no use for it.

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:45 pm

What do you want to do?
Will you install another disk? Do you want to resize the existing disk? How much space are you willing to give to Gentoo?

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Sun Apr 09, 2006 11:46 pm

Idealy I only want Gentoo on my system, nothing else. Help

asiB4 · Post by **asiB4** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:53 am

rakeyry wrote:Idealy I only want Gentoo on my system, nothing else. Help

do you only have the one hard drive or more than one? What is the output of #fdisk -l /dev/hda. Ideally, if you only have one (hda - ide, sda - sata) you would have it set up as the master. Is the ide cable shared with another drive such as a cdrom or something that is set to master? If so, you may want to swap the jumper settings around making the drive you want to install gentoo on "master" and whatever else is sharing that cable set it as "slave". On the otherhand if you don't really care about that, and you have only one hard disk, you can setup your partitions on hdb...you can #cfdisk /dev/hdb...cfdisk will give you a ncurses view of your partitioning scheme. Write the partition table, and create your filesystem as described in the handbook...replacing where it says hda with hdb. IMO your much better off, changing the jumpers and making the drive your master...creates a lot less problems further down the road. No warranty expressed or implied, mileage may vary.

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:02 am

If you only want to use Gentoo, then you just need to wipe the disk. However, you should make a backup of all your data before doing that or you will lose everything.
Just follow the handbook and replace all references for hda with hdb. If you can do it, you might prefer to change the IDE settings and have the disk as master.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:18 pm

By disk do you mean hard-drive and also, how do I wipe it? It's not as if I can just go into DOS and type Format C: How do I change jumper settings? If I use the boot disks of Windows XP, can I Format with them?

jmbsvicetto · Post by **jmbsvicetto** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:52 pm

I think you should be reading the Gentoo Handbook.
To wipe out your disk and create the partitions to Gentoo, you need to run fdisk. The Handbook walks you through the entire process. You should read the entire document before starting the installation.
If you have any questions after reading the Handbook, let us know.

PS - You can find addtional info in the Gentoo Installation Resources.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:06 pm

I have wiped all prior partitions, does that mean Windows is gone?

sonicbhoc · Post by **sonicbhoc** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:16 pm

Yes. If you followed the instructions properly, you should now be able to format your drives properly. And might I reccomend:
cfdisk. Like Fdisk, but much more easy to use.

shockertwin · Post by **shockertwin** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:35 pm

if yoru having this many problems, maybe you should either:

a) consider an easier distro such as ubuntu for the time being
b) let someone ssh in and give you a hand with yoru installation
c) follow along in the handbook. It explains everything very nicely, and its super easy to use. Unfortunately it is 100 pages printed, so you may want a laptop or know how ot use the documentation during installation. (which is also explained in the install guide.)

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:38 pm

I am following the handbook EXACTLY. The only problem I have right now is getting rid of Windows.

rakeyry · Post by **rakeyry** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:45 pm

I downloaded the live 2005 installer. That might be the problem, methinks. I'm booting up the 2006 as I type this. Thanks everyone for your help with my stupidity.