I have just added a 120GB drive to my test system as hdb.

Initial setup is as follows



hdb1(16GB) is for large downloads (eg. SuSE wget) and installs from hd
hdb5-hdb11(5GB) are for installs of new distros (single partion per install)
The rest of the disk is unpartitioned at this time.
The linux swap and other installed os's are on hda

I was able to use diskdrake to format hdb1 and hdb5, but, the other partitions would not format. The format button was available, It started the format process, but status was always left at Not Formatted.

I exited and restarted diskdrake, and still had the same problem.

Finally, I deleted hdb6-hdb11, and recreated them. This time I formatted them one at a time as I created them. Seemed to work.

Strange. Seems to be some sort of problem if you have too many unformatted partitions.

Strange indeed Owyn . . I never came across this, maybe just because I usually format as soon as I create them like you did the second time.

Must be bliss to add 120 GB to your system,. Santa was right on target there !


Bruno

I'm beginning to feel a lot less like an idiot! I have had problems with this in 9.2 and thought it was just my inability to follow directions or do something correctly. I played with exiting and coming back. Hmmm.

More problems but I finally tracked down a major symptom/cause of the problems.

The dev links for hdb7-hdb11 had not been created and journals had not been created on hdb5.

I tried manually creating a symlink for hdb7 but it did not work. Finally rebooted and checked dev. Ok now.

Then manually ran

# su
# mke2fs -j /dev/hdb5
....
# mke2fs -j /dev/hdb11

Then reran

# diskdrake

And now all partitions showing properly as journalled fs.

I assume this formatting problem is the root cause of my wget problems with SuSE.

Just a followup on this topic.

None of the partitions were formatted properly.

It looks like the only safe way to use diskdrake is to format the partitions at the same time as you create them. IE: One at a time.

I went and looked at the partitions last night in the MCC. Everything for Mandrake was listed correctly. Everything on my other drive except the FAT32 partition was listed as unformatted despite my knowing that two different distros were installed on those partitions. I think it must have something to do with it not being mounted so it does not show the correct format status.

I know for sure that partitions that I had formatted as ext3 were ext2 (unjournalled). Also the major mixup on the 16GB partition that turned out to have only 4GB capacity.

Thank goodness for "mke2fs -j".

Why does this sound so logical to me ? Sorry that you had all these problems with DiskDrake, never had any hiccup using it . . .


Bruno

What is strange to me and makes me think of a bug is that they all are in use by different programs. How can a distro use a partition that is not formatted???

By the way, when I went in to do try 2 on SuSe it wanted to take my lovely Mandrake partitions and "repair" them. I wisely told them "No!" and yes I checked, Mandrake is still in fine condition.