trouble with creating a new filesystem

[mulhern]

I was hoping someone can resolve this for me.

I am using RH 7.0 and I have updated the utils-linux-2.10s-13.7.i386.rpm , which is the package that "mkfs" is located.
I am adding an additional harddrive to my server. It was a primary drive on another machine, which I canibalized for the server.

1. Installed it and was recognized by the machine as hdc.

2. Used fdisk to delete all old hdaX partitions.

3. I had problems eliminating the boot sector, used "cfdisk" to eliminate the boot sector and created an logical partition.

4. With the drive unmounted, I tried to use mkfs to create a new filesystem using:

[root@miigas /]# mkfs.ext2 -v /dev/hdc1
mke2fs 1.18, 11-Nov-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09

( I also used mkfs and mke2fs with the same options and arguements, with the same result).

THE RESULT:

It seems to be a runnaway process that does not execute making a filesystem. It hangs and never finishes. I used the verbose option to see activity.

Questions:

- Am I doing this right ?
- What is the proper syntax to execute this action?

Help me! :confused:

mulhern

[Jinx]

I think mkfs.ext2 /dev/hdcX should work...

Have you tried going back into Fdisk and selecting the File System ID? There is a section in there where you can select what kind of FS you want on the partition... I think 82 is Linux (ext2), though if ya type "l" in fdisk it should list em for ya.

Try: http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/index.html

I am currently in the process of upgrading my own harddrive and I found the above mini Howto very useful. :)

Hope that helps...

Cya round
Jinx

[mulhern]

It seems I am doing everything right and the problem is an advanced one.

The real question is:

How do I blow away the old boot sector, which still seems to exist until I execute mkfs corectly.

It currently reads the old boot sector of 10 MB. When I put in the 'df' command, I get:

[root@miigas /mp3]# df

/dev/hda5 398250 145352 232337 39% /
/dev/hda9 199085 13143 175662 7% /home
/dev/hda7 298663 155891 127352 56%/sect0
/dev/hda6 847244 779372 24832 97% /usr
/dev/hdc1 11677 13 11061 1% /mp3

Well I hope this is better evidence, to help finding the solution.

Hopefully someone has a good idea. I think read the answer once on this discusion board but I forgot !
thanks

mulhern :rolleyes:

I have not solved the problem yet, all good ideas appreciated!

Question:

Do I select "Primary" or "extended" partition?

Cfdisk asked to make it bootable?

Hmmmmmm?

[ 23 August 2001: Message edited by: mulhern ]