Urza9814 Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 I have a dual-booted windows 98/Mandrake 9.2 comp, and when I installed mandrake on a new hard drive, it put in a windows partition. Do I need this? it is located at /mnt/windows, and appears to contain nothing. The drives for normal windows are /mnt/Win_C and /mnt/win_D...so unless it's some temp thing, it doesn't appear that I'd need it...and it seems to be taking at least 1/3 of my drive...and, if I don't need it, how do I remove it? I would like to expand my swap a bit (though it's already about 500MB :-P) and...I dunno...the rest will probably just become extra root space...but I have no clue how to do this stuff...so any help would be greatly appriciated... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 In the file tree of a linux system, you will find a folder called /mnt. This folder contains the names of "mount points" in your system. You pair up a device in your system--hard drive partition or cdrom, for example--with a mount point, and then you can browse or otherwise utilize the data found on that device. Mandrake did not make any windex partition. You are no doubt looking at your win98 partition from linux. If you can't see any thing there, then it is simply not mounted, although Mandrake installs supermount as default. You can erase your data if you mess with it. Although, it does have to be mounted first. Would you post the contents of your /etc/fstab file? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 You can erase your data if you mess with it. Although, it does have to be mounted first. :o what? :huh: what has to be mounted first? and how can one erase anything messing with fstab/supermount? I obviously haven't the slightest idea what you're trying to say :D It's just that those 2 statements are so out there, I got to know :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted February 1, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 (edited) I'm not sure what it is, but it's on my second hard drive...which isn't even recognized by windows...I think I might have put it there during install...not being sure of what I was doing :-P probably thinking since that hard drive was partitioned from an earlier install attempt that it was showing both of my hard drives...but anyways, I know it's no windows data...I was just thinking it might serve some purpose because I was dual-booted...though I didn't think it'd be that big if it was...anyways, how do I get rid of it??? Edited February 1, 2004 by Urza9814 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 You can erase your data if you mess with it. Although, it does have to be mounted first. :o what? :huh: what has to be mounted first? and how can one erase anything messing with fstab/supermount? I obviously haven't the slightest idea what you're trying to say :D It's just that those 2 statements are so out there, I got to know :unsure: He has said that 1) he wants to erase the item and that 2) Mandrake put it there. Since Mandrake would create this during an install, someone could unknowingly delete the data in an existing dual boot installation. Since he also said there are no visible files when he browses it, I can't be sure about what he is looking at. So, it is better to find out than to inadvertantly suggest deleting part of his system. Doesn't that make any sense, bvc? As you know, /etc/fstab should tell any one of us what Mandrake has done, and how it might be mounted. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 I'm not sure what it is, but it's on my second hard drive...which isn't even recognized by windows...I think I might have put it there during install...not being sure of what I was doing :-P probably thinking since that hard drive was partitioned from an earlier install attempt that it was showing both of my hard drives...but anyways, I know it's no windows data...I was just thinking it might serve some purpose because I was dual-booted...though I didn't think it'd be that big if it was...anyways, how do I get rid of it??? If you are sure that it is a fat partition on the second drive, and not your actual windex partition, then removing reference to it in /etc/fstab will prevent it from showing up in your system. But, it is no doubt a partition (I don't know why else it would show up) then it really isn't hurting anything. It is just an empty fat partition. You could utilize it in your linux system by reformatting it, or even using it as a storage place that both windex and linux could access. Looking at your /etc/fstab would answer some of these questions. Any partition on your first drive would be hdax, with x being a partition number. Your second drive could be hdb, hdc, or hdd, depending on which ide channel it is installed. The corresponding partitions would be hdbx, hdcx, or hddx. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted February 1, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 (edited) /etc/fstab is like...messed up...even in root it says permission denied :-S If you are sure that it is a fat partition on the second drive, and not your actual windex partition If it was just a folder /mnt/windows, I would assume it was some error because of the dual boot...but it's there on discdrake...on the second drive... hmmm...I was just looking at it a bit on DiskDrake, and it says it's not a fat or other windows partition, but a Journalised FS: ext3 Edited February 1, 2004 by Urza9814 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 1, 2004 Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 if you cannot do a cat /etc/fstab would you give us the output of cat /etc/mtab then? And ll /etc/fstab as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted February 1, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2004 oooh! it has to have 'cat' before '/etc/fstab'! that'd be why it didn't work... :-P here's what it says: /dev/hdb6 / ext2 defaults 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0 none /mnt/cdrom2 supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0 none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,codepage=850,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows ext3 defaults 1 2 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0 0 none /mnt/removable supermount dev=/dev/sda1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,kudzu 0 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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