chmod trouble

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: chmod trouble
started by: underdog5004

Posted by underdog5004 on April 06 2006,20:22

Ok. So, I'm dual booting XP and SuSE on /hda but I want to install dsl (frugal, of course) onto /hdb1. I've already made the partitions in SuSE, but when I cfdisk hdb1 from dsl, I get the message that hdb1 is read only...can't start...etc.

So I go online, try to figure it out, seems I need to use a command (chmod) to change the read-write permissions on hdb. only now, I can't figure out what to do...I've tried pretty much every combo I can think of. I just want to read/write on /hdb*...

the command that I think I need to use is:

Code Sample

chmod u rw--- /mnt/hdb1

but that doesn't seem to work. Anyways, if there are any linux gurus, or people smarter than me (98% of the population) out there, then feel free show me how to do this...thanks

Posted by mikshaw on April 06 2006,21:10

chmod on a mountpoint will chmod only the mountpoint, unless you chmod recursively after a filesystem has been mounted. You can't chmod a partition anyway, so my guess is that this is not a file permissions issue.

cfdisk is not run on a partition (hdb1), but instead on a whole drive (hdb). Since you already set up your partitions, there is no need to run cfdisk on it again. At most, you'd use mke2fs to format hdb1.

Posted by underdog5004 on April 07 2006,00:29

hmm...I feel like an idiot. Thanks for the quick response...I'll try it and see if it works. If not, I know where to go.

EDIT: I used

Code Sample

mke2fs /mnt/hdb1

and it came back with a message saying that the partition size was 0, and that that could be from not restarting before use of partition. So I restarted. It said the same thing. I don't want to whine, but now what do I do?

Posted by sheldonisaac on April 07 2006,13:56

underdog5004, it is possible that the /dev/hdb1 partition you created under SUSE is somehow not being correctly seen under DSL.

Might you try this?

Boot from the DSL CD-ROM, press F2 when the penguin appears?
(not sure about this, it's been a while)

and say

dsl 2 (and whatever other cheatcodes may be needed?)

I guess that gets you to a commandline as root?

Say

cfdisk /dev/hdb

cfdisk has several commands:
p will show you the partitions on /dev/hdb

If you see partition 1, delete it:

d

cfdisk will ask you which partition, so tell it 1

Then do

p

again, to see whether partition 1 is gone

If so, say

n

to make a new partition
follow the prompts, create partition 1 of the size you want, then

w

to write the changes into the partition table(?)

And reboot.

This time you should be able to use the menus on the GUI to do a frugal GRUB install to /dev/hdb1

Posted by underdog5004 on April 07 2006,15:28

Ok, I've tried installing DSL (frugal) to hdb1...but the installer script said that it only works reliably on hda...so I shut down, and made hdb into hda. I cfdisk'ed and installed with a gig swap and ~16G hda3...I just don't know what file to point GrUB to. I can easily edit GrUB through suse, but I've no idea which file to point it to. I've tried a lot of different files, but none seem to work...aaaaargh!

Posted by mikshaw on April 07 2006,15:41

You could have just copied the KNOPPIX and boot directories from the cd onto hdb1 from within Suse and use Suse's bootloader to start DSL. Swapping the partitions around will probably mean trouble for existing systems.

Kernel in DSL frugal on hdb1 would be (hd1,0)/boot/isolinux/linux24
initrd: (hd1,0)/boot/isolinux/minirt24.gz

Posted by sheldonisaac on April 07 2006,16:20

http://damnsmalllinux.org/static/act-ST/f-26/t-11479/hl-werner

Sorry it wrapped.

On Feb 13, werner posted in DSL tips and tricks as to how to install to hdb

I tried it, and it works. I changed back to hda, I forgot why.

Not sure, but I thinkl DSL still needs a "primary" partition for the /KNOPPIX and /boot etc; that is, mine is on hda3, although I think I had it on hdb2 briefly.

here's part of my menu.lst ; it's in /cdrom/boot/grub/ (/dev/hda3 gets mounted to /cdrom )

-----------

default 0
timeout 5

title Windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot

title DSL
root (hd0,2)

kernel /boot/linux24 fromhd=/dev/hda3 root=/dev/hda3 quiet dma base opt=hdb2 home=hdb2 restore=hdb2 nopcmcia frugal write

initrd /boot/minirt24.gz

Posted by underdog5004 on April 10 2006,01:00

Yeah, I tried that, but then, for some reason, SuSE disappears from the GrUB menu. And, oddly enough, GrUB boots into a weird textmode mode of GrUB, not the graphical mode...hmmm. I've had to (several times) fix grub with the suse installation disk....ugh.
Furthermore, It's difficult to mount hdb1 through SuSE. I get this odd message saying that hda3 is already mounted. SuSE won't let me umount hda3, cause that's where SuSE resides. I have to umount hda1, then mount hdb1.