Navigation: [Uncategorized] [Table of Contents]
UN1: I'm having problems with my newly made partitions. They're only mounting read-only, or I can't make symlinks on them, or tarballs aren't extracting properly, or they're showing up mounted as vfat or ntfs. I'm sure that I used mkfs correctly, but it's not working. Why?
Symptoms:
- /boot partition contains Windows Files
- Errors extracting stageX tarballs
- partition is mounting as vfat instead of ext2 or other fs of choice.
What's the Problem?
- Windows fat table remains on disk even after mke2fs
How to verify the problem:
(if the partition is hda1)
umount /dev/hda1
mount /dev/hda1 /boot
mount
this will show the fs type that the partition was mounted as vfat instead of ext2 or your fs of choice.
Solution:
- Completely wipe out the contents on the partition using dd. (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdXY)
Be sure to make backups if necessary.
Quickfix:
- Specify the fs type when mounting the partition
(ie. mount -t ext2 /dev/hda1 /boot)
NOTE: If you are installing gentoo where Windows used to be, as a general precaution run dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/BOOT immediately before mke2fs during the install process. (replace /dev/BOOT With the appropriate device)

