I just imaged my IBM T30 Laptop to

[csmith28tech]

I just imaged my IBM T30 Laptop to run XP-Pro and Linux/RedHat 8.0
(Note: I'm kinda new to Linux but I have a lot of Solaris and AIX
experience.) and it left me with a few questions. I repeatedly attempted
to define my Linux partitions/filesystems using Disk Druid and since I
had 10gig to throw at this I was generous when creating /var and /usr
etc. etc. allocating 1024meg to them and at least twice what was
recommended for swap and everything else for that matter but the install
always failed.

It wasn't immediately apparent that the install was going to faile but I
kept getting the alerts during the install that said I hadn't allocated
enough space to for example /usr. It said something like, "You have not
allocated enough space to the /usr filesystem to load the packages you
have chosen you must allocate 6XXmeg to /usr. Well, like I said I
allocated 1024 meg to /usr so I just clicked "OK" and the install
continued but it would not boot. So I repeated the process except this
time when I got that alert I tried to back up in the install to the
point where I defined my partitions/filesystems and it wouldn't allow me
back into Disk Druid so I went forward again. Again I got the same error
and the install failed.<sigh>

So then I installed Linux again using the automatic partition disk using
existing space option and it installed just fine but the only
partitions/filesystems a df -ak shows are:
/
/proc
/proc/bus/usb
/boot
/dve/pts
/dev/shm

No /var, /tmp, /usr, /home so. The directories existed in / but they
weren't mounted so I tried to mount -a and it didn't do anything. It
just threw back my prompt. df -ak echoed the same output. So then I
tried mount /var and it echoed:

&quot;mount can't find /var in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab&quot;

So I thought, Hell I'm root I can fix that and I entered the folllowing
entry in /etc/fstab for /var:

/dev/hda3 /var ext3 defaults 0 0

Then I ran mount /var and it mounted no problem. I thought &quot;kewl lets
see if it boots.&quot; It didn't .

I got all kinds of errors about /var not existing and the boot would
hang at &quot;Starting Logger:&quot;. I tried to boot from the boot floppy and it
failed. I tried using the &quot;recover&quot; option booting from CD and it
failed. I had to re-image the partition. Me being a glutton for
punishment I tried to use Disk Druid again with the same results from
above then gave up and chose automatic partitioning. Now I'm thinking I
need to make entries in /etc/fstab and /etc/mtab to define /var, /usr,
/home, /tmp and /usr/local/bin as separate filesystems but I don't want
to do it the hard way. &quot;Again&quot;

I already had to re-image the XP-Pro image even though I really didn't
want to.

I spent two days researching fips so I could do a non-intrusive
re-partition of my existing drive to avoid having to re-install XP-Pro.
Then when I tried to use fips I discovered that fips doesn't work with
NTFS or XP-Pro. Then I tried to use P-Magic and the Linux image loaded
fine (Note: that was the first time I encountered the Disk Druid issue
with /usr) but then when I attempted to boot the XP-Pro partition it
kept throwing an error that said, he he &quot;HAL.DLL is either corrupt or
does not exist. Please install it. Well, I tried, but the only way I
could boot was from floppy or XP install CD and unless I'm missing some
MS Magic Trick when you boot from floppy or CD the HD is not available
so I'm not sure how I was supposed to be able to replace the HAL.DLL file.

&quot;Open the pod bay doors HAL.&quot;

&quot;Sorry Dave, I can't allow that to Happen.&quot;

So I re-installed XP-Pro, <sigh> along with all the IBM drivers (IBM
Laptop Drivers arent supported by MS) XP-Office, Netscape 7.0.2, Norton
AV, Zone Alarm, etc. etc. etc................

All I want to do is run df -ak and see the filesystems that I'm used to seeing.

Any help with this would be appreciated.

 

[csmith28tech]

Nevermind, I figured it out for myself without the any of your help. Golly, I sure am glad I joined Tek-Tips or not so much.