Make install Problems

[Phil Schaffner]

Adam,

On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 05:32, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> Am Di, den 10.02.2004 schrieb Adam Cooper um 11:16:
> > On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 09:58, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> > > Hello? Why on earth is /usr/local a vfat (fat32 presumably) formatted?
> > > vfat does not know anything about symlinks, it's NO LINUX filesystem.
> > > Exactly that I assumed in my previous posting yesterday.
> > 
> > Yep I suppose that could be the problem :-|. I apologise for innate
> > stupidity. This i suppose leads me onto my final question.
> 
> It is your problem.

Probably just ignorance.  Ignorance can be fixed, stupid is forever. ;^)

> > How can I reformat to ext3 without losing all the data on /usr/local/?
> > Can I do it without a re-install? It's taken me a week to get the
> > computer sorted and I don't really want to have to go through it all
> > again.
> 
> Switch to runlevel 1 by entering "init 1", then copy the content of
> /usr/local to a different place on your disk, umount /dev/hda7, format
> the partition with ext3, edit /etc/fstab to fit the new filesystem,
> mount /dev/hda7, push back the previously copied data to /usr/local.
> Done. You now can go back to your standard runlevel, might be 5 as you
> use X, by entering "init 5".

If you have room on / you could save a step, possibly increase
efficiency, and save /dev/sda7 for other uses, by going to runlevel 1,
then:

  mkdir /usr/new_local
  cp -a /usr/local/* /usr/new_local
  umount /dev/hda7
  rmdir /usr/local
  mv /usr/new_local /usr/local

Then edit fstab to mount /dev/sda7 as desired. You may want to leave it
as vfat at another mount point until you verify all is OK, or perhaps
permanently if you want to multi-boot and exchange things with your M$
OS on /dev/hda1.

For example, make the fstab line:

/dev/hda7     /exchange              vfat    defaults        0 0

Then:

  mkdir /exchange
  mount -a

</Aside:  The /windows line looks weird.  Is it working?

Perhaps it is:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows     ntfs ro,noauto,users,gid=501,umask=0227 0 0

Rather than

/dev/hda1/mnt /windows     ntfs ro,noauto,users,gid=501,umask=0227 0 0

as shown earlier, and presumably you have a kernel/module for ntfs
loaded.

Aside./>

Alternatively, just in case it is not obvious, to format as ext3:

  mke2fs -j /dev/hda7

Make fstab line:
/dev/hda7     /exchange              ext3    defaults        1 2

  mkdir /exchange
  mount -a

Good luck with your education in Linux.

Phil