Hi Folks, There's a thread on the Zen Support Forum, Linux Division, with title "Setting screen res in Ubuntu 7.04". The start of the thread is at
http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/thread/27097.aspx
The topic has somewhat moved on from that, and the OP (Ken Odlum)'s problem is now that, using Ubuntu, while he apparently has two hard disks, one of which he can use normally, he can only read from the other and not write to it. This problem is first mentioned at
http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/27097/27130/permalink/ShowThread.aspx#27130
and followed up at
http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/27097/27151/permalink/ShowThread.aspx#27151
I ("eelman") intervened acouple of posts later, with suggestions 'cat /etc/fstab' etc. It seems he's dome this, and now
http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/27097/27219/permalink/ShowThread.aspx#27219
he says "If I go to Places Computer it shows the other hard drive and I can mount it and read or copy from it OK" despite the fact that it's not in /etc/fstab.
The only thing I can think of is that when he does that, whetever Ubuntu does behind the scenes amounts to an explicit
mount -t ... /dev/hdb* /...
command. But, not having any Ubuntu eperience, I simply don't know.
If anyone can make a useful suggestio I could pass on, or better still is on the Zen Support Forum and can intervene directly, this would be welcome. The guy is a relatively recent convert to Linux, and I wouldn't like his faith to be compromised!
Best wishes to all, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 04-Jul-07 Time: 23:01:47 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 7/4/07, Ted Harding ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
he says "If I go to Places Computer it shows the other hard drive and I can mount it and read or copy from it OK" despite the fact that it's not in /etc/fstab.
The only thing I can think of is that when he does that, whetever Ubuntu does behind the scenes amounts to an explicit
mount -t ... /dev/hdb* /...
command. But, not having any Ubuntu eperience, I simply don't know.
It sounds like the hot plug system is finding the disk, and mounting it, like it does for USB mass storage.
I'd suggest he try adding it to fstab with the desired mount flags.
Tim.
On 05-Jul-07 07:07:38, Tim Green wrote:
On 7/4/07, Ted Harding ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
he says "If I go to Places Computer it shows the other hard drive and I can mount it and read or copy from it OK" despite the fact that it's not in /etc/fstab.
The only thing I can think of is that when he does that, whetever Ubuntu does behind the scenes amounts to an explicit
mount -t ... /dev/hdb* /...
command. But, not having any Ubuntu eperience, I simply don't know.
It sounds like the hot plug system is finding the disk, and mounting it, like it does for USB mass storage.
I'd suggest he try adding it to fstab with the desired mount flags.
Tim.
Thanks, Tim. I'll pass it on, and see what happens. Or, rather, I would pass it on, with the suggestion to copy the line for /dev/hda1 and edit it to substitute hdb1 (or whatever), so as to keep the same mount options. That's what I'd do on my setup.
But it looks a bit different in Ubuntu. Below is what he gets from 'cat /etc/fstab (I've put "" for line continuation):
$ cat /etc/fstab # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 # /dev/hda1 UUID=f21e9d7d-ccca-4f26-94a7-4d0019bf8e8b / ext3 \ defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /dev/hda5 UUID=c34ef736-5951-4b64-ac1f-7a1f1b47f80c none swap sw 0 0 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0 /dev/hdd /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
So, instead of the "/dev/hda1" etc. that I'm used to, there's a huge "UUID=...." identifier for the "hda" device, which is different according to each partition on the device.
So I wouldn't have a clue what to suggest he puts there for his "hdb" drive! Remember, this guy is newish to Linux ....
Any suggestions?
With thanks, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 05-Jul-07 Time: 09:03:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
What file system is the new disk formatted to?
If it's NTFS (which is more than likely, if it's a modern external USB drive), ubuntu will only mount the disk as read-only because it doesn't yet fully support writing to NTFS out of the box.
It is possible to try out the latest NTFS-3G release. Here's a tutorial for ubuntu edgy eft:
http://howtoforge.org/ubuntu_edgy_eft_ntfs_ntfs_3g
In my experience it's mostly stable, but v. slow.
Peter.
On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 09:52 +0100, samwise wrote:
What file system is the new disk formatted to?
If it's NTFS (which is more than likely, if it's a modern external USB drive), ubuntu will only mount the disk as read-only because it doesn't yet fully support writing to NTFS out of the box.
Heh great minds and all that..If I hadn't have gone to make a tea I would have been there first.
On feisty (as he is running) the ntfs 3g stuff is available from the universe repository and works really well, it is still a little slow but I think this is just a side effect of being a FUSE mount.
I skimmed the posts and I couldn't see any mention of filesystem type for the external/2nd hard drives
Do we know what it is ? the external drive sounds like it may be behaving as if it is NTFS. In which case he needs to install ntfs-config and its dependencies and then run sudo ntfs-config and check the options to enable write access.
A copy of the output of tail -f /var/log/messages as the external drive is plugged in may help here.
So, instead of the "/dev/hda1" etc. that I'm used to, there's a huge "UUID=...." identifier for the "hda" device, which is different according to each partition on the device.
This is the new way :)
It's better because the UUID is of course unique to each volume which means that there is no chance of drives being mounted in the wrong places if something causes device nodes to reshuffle (happens a lot to those with advanced docking stations on laptops that include a drive bay) With UUID's you could literally swap master/slave jumpers about etc and still have a working computer.
To get the UUID in the first place you run 'sudo vol_id /dev/hdb1' Then insert this in your new line in fstab as per the others.
Although just because some volumes are using UUID in fstab doesn't mean that they all have to..you are still free to add device nodes as before. However I recommend he take the 5 mins extra effort to do it with UUID.
By the way another cool thing you can do is set Labels (e2label for ext partitions) and then define your disks by Label=blah rather than using UUID's or device nodes.
On 05-Jul-07 09:05:03, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I skimmed the posts and I couldn't see any mention of filesystem type for the external/2nd hard drives
Do we know what it is ? the external drive sounds like it may be behaving as if it is NTFS. In which case he needs to install ntfs-config and its dependencies and then run sudo ntfs-config and check the options to enable write access.
It looks as though your guess may have been correct, Wayne.
I suggested he try fdisk /dev/hdb in the following terms:
As further diagnostics, what happens if you (as root) enter the following command? NB!! DO NOT USE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE "p" AND "q" COMMANDS IN FDISK FOR NOW!!
fdisk /dev/hdb
[and then when you get the prompt " Command (m for help):"]
p
[and then you should get a listing of the partitions on /dev/hdb. Please post the result] [THEN]
q
[to quit from fdisk]
He tried this, but hadn't "sudo"'d, so got "Unable to open /dev/hdb" He then tried your other suggestion, which I'd passed on:
$ sudo vol_id /dev/hdb1 Password: ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem ID_FS_TYPE=ntfs ID_FS_VERSION=3.1 ID_FS_UUID=D6DCB497DCB472FB ID_FS_LABEL=Drive ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=Drive
so definitely it looks like an NTFS. Then, I fear, he did an OOPS:
$ sudo fdisk /dev/hdb1 The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 119148. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): sudo fdisk /dev/hdb1 Building a new Sun disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous contents won't be recoverable. Drive type ? auto configure [blah ... ]
So he re-ran the "sudo" command (beginning with "s") from within fdisk, and in fdisk: "s create a new empty Sun disklabel".
Now he writes to the forum:
"Yesterday I installed ntfs-3g and now Ubuntu allows me to read and write to usb hard drives and usb pendrives which it would not before BUT although I enabled both read and write of internal and external drives the internal second hard drive as now vanished altogether."
Is this a case of OUCH!??
I fear that by getting his wires crossed when entering "sudo" (i.e. as a command to fdisk rather than the Linux command line) he may have black-holed his NTFS /dev/hdb1.
I'm getting out of my depth here, since I've no experience with NTFS nor with Ubuntu peculiarities.
Any useful comments, anyone?
The above events can be viewed on the 2nd page of the thread at
http://forum.zensupport.co.uk/2/27287/ShowThread.aspx
With thanks, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 07-Jul-07 Time: 15:28:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Sat, 2007-07-07 at 15:28 +0100, ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
So he re-ran the "sudo" command (beginning with "s") from within fdisk, and in fdisk: "s create a new empty Sun disklabel".
Now he writes to the forum:
"Yesterday I installed ntfs-3g and now Ubuntu allows me to read and write to usb hard drives and usb pendrives which it would not before BUT although I enabled both read and write of internal and external drives the internal second hard drive as now vanished altogether."
Is this a case of OUCH!??
It doesn't look good, but that said I just tried replicating his keystrokes and unless he also hit w at some point it *shouldn't* have nuked his partition. Although it is anyone's guess at this point what keys he was pressing to try and exit the Sun Disklabel prompts.
I'd suggest you get him to run
sudo fdisk -l /dev/hdb
So we can see what that disk now thinks it has as partitions. There are steps that can be taken to recover the disk contents if all he has done is nuked the partition table.
After being in a very similar situation with a newcomer myself in the past, I tend now to be very careful about which commands I suggest to run if I am dealing with someone whose skills I am not sure of.
Asking him to do an fdisk -l or vol_id is far far safer than getting him to navigate the commands from the fdisk prompt as both of the above merely list the information we need and then exit. fdisk has bitten many a pro, let alone a newcomer :)
On 7/7/07, Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.co.uk wrote:
Asking him to do an fdisk -l or vol_id is far far safer than getting him to navigate the commands from the fdisk prompt as both of the above merely list the information we need and then exit. fdisk has bitten many a pro, let alone a newcomer :)
mkswap caught me out once - it doesn't check the partition is marked as a swap partition so it nuked the first few sectors of a FAT partition. After much buggering about with a hokey copy of Norton Utilities I was able to reconstruct the boot sector and copy the 2nd copy of the FAT over the remains of the first.
I suspect NTFS is not as simple as that.
Tim.
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samwise -
ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood