michaelc Posted September 18, 2006 Report Share Posted September 18, 2006 This hasn't been a problem until now, but apparently, only 5.9 of my 40 gigabyte IDE hard drive is being recognized! Any advice? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 18, 2006 Report Share Posted September 18, 2006 Bios limitation? How did you originally format the drive? If neither of these are an issue, then I would get the manufacturer's utiliy (they all have them) and check the drive out. Sometimes the drive itself needs a reset accomplished by the utility. Otherwise, it needs to be replaced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 Once the kernel loads, linux kisses the bios hard drive size limitations goodbye. You should see the entire drive. What's the output of: # fdisk -l Also, if you used the dd command to transfer data from one drive to your 40GB drive you can have those types of problems re erroneous size reports. Same thing goes for partimage which uses dd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelc Posted September 19, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 There is no output for #fdisk -l It goes: [michael@localhost ~]$ #fdisk -l [michael@localhost ~]$ Also, I haven't used anything called DD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted September 19, 2006 Report Share Posted September 19, 2006 [michael@localhost ~]$ #fdisk -l[michael@localhost ~]$ The # indicates that you are root, so do su [root passwword] fdisk -l :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 Or use: df -h to see the max size of your partition. Chances are the disk isn't partitioned fully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 Surely if he opened MCC...............Mountpoints........................partitions he would see the state of his HDD and what partitions he had, what type they were, and whether they are mounted or not. Why the need for him to do all this cli stuff when he is a newbie ??? I have never been able to fathom this attitude from day 1 of my linux experience. No wonder the anti Linux brethren say Linux is not ready for the desktop when good gui is ignored for simple solving of even the simplest of problems. Sure the cli is a magnificent tool and can be almost used to do open heart surgery if necessary and probably is, but simple and visually understandable tools are great for disposing of simple problems that only require simple measures. This seemingly increasing cli thing is one of the reasons I find myself participating less in discussions here at MUB. If you think I am imaginaging things then just take a few moments and do a bit of a lookover most of the postings by regular members and you will be very surprised. They are all great and valuable work and that is for sure. More and more of my gui type scenario suggestions seem to be brushed aside and/or totally ignored. My suggested solutions may not be the answer and probably are often not, and that I can handle any time, but I notice that the majority of the newbies seem to think that the cli answers are in the main are the only ones worth responding to. Although many do acknowledge the gui suggestion as having worked or didn't and it is this few who encourage my continued participation. Please no one take this as a rant because it isn't, I just hope that some thinking about the subject takes place in time that is all. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 Surely if he opened MCC...............Mountpoints........................partitions he would see the state of his HDD and what partitions he had, what type they were, and whether they are mounted or not.Why the need for him to do all this cli stuff when he is a newbie ??? Never thought about it to be honest, but by the time I navigated in MCC to this location, I could have opened a konsole window and typed it quicker. John, you know in Linux there are many ways to do the same task, some are quicker than others. Sure, the GUI is great, and yes, maybe we should suggest this more to newbies. I do use the GUI in some of my examples on here, my examples are half-split between them for helping people. But the main part of using Linux is to get used to using the CLI. What happens if you don't have a GUI for something? Your stuck, how you gonna fix your problem? You never use the CLI, and are scared to do so. By helping newbies, either with GUI, or suggesting them the CLI, they can get more accustomed to it, and not scared to use it. When I first used Mandrake 10.0/10.1 last year and this was the time I joined this board, I would never have EVEN tempted to use the CLI. I didn't know what I could do there. Now, I've forced myself to use it, and I know Linux far more indepth. In sharing our knowledge of the CLI, we are making it a less scary place - not just for us, but for newbies as well. Not attacking you, just explaining why the CLI is there, and why it makes sense to use it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 Thanks Ian. I know you are not knocking me. Your very first sentence shows my point. While the quickest time for yourself and other users (because you know all or most of the commands already) is to use the cli, it hits the newbie head on. The geekie type of newbie accepts it as "wow" whereas as most others just get disillusioned and stay for a little while and then give Linux away, going back to Windows. Sure the cli is a great tool. I hope we don't make a resugence of the attitude that "if you can't or don't want to learn the intimate workings of Linux then p**s of we don't want to hear from you" . The vast majority of users of Linux want to just be able to use it and learn about its intricies over a period of time. By the way, my statement was not directed at you and never will be. As I said it is something for everyone to ponder over so there is no need for anyone to justify themselves to me or anyone else for that matter. Just keep on your great work of helping when possible. Cheers. John. PS. Has our original poster solved his issue yet ???. If so then please let us all know. It's called feedback. JB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 FWIW, John, I agree that we all tend to cli answers and dismiss gui. Although cli is quicker, it is not the environment that people like; only us geeks like it. And this is a problem in the linux community. Whether we all like it or not, gui rules the day. I do not agree that people coming to linux must learn cli. Part of the limitation to linux is having gui's that do the job without error, a problem for as long as I have used linux. Incidently, a drive can report itself wrong, and it can either be corrected by the manufacturer's utility or it is junk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 I have no problem with the gui. But fdsik -l gives a lot more info than you will see in mcc/diskdrake and IMHO, I needed to see that info in order to more effectively help michaelc. In particular, I wanted to see the fdisk report of the total hard drive size, the partition structure, any anomalies picked up by fdisk and the start and end blocks for every partition on the drive. You won't get all that info in diskdrake and what he would get in diskdrake, he would have to interpret and describe accurately in a return post, which may or may not happen. With a straight copy and paste of the fdisk output, there's nothing for him to interpret and the status of the drive is stated in accurate detail. I'm not insisting anyone learn the cli, but here it's a superior tool for troubleshooting the problem, particularly when the troubleshooting has to be done over the internet on a forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 Surely if he opened MCC...............Mountpoints........................partitions he would see the state of his HDD and what partitions he had, what type they were, and whether they are mounted or not.Why the need for him to do all this cli stuff when he is a newbie ??? I have never been able to fathom this attitude from day 1 of my linux experience. No wonder the anti Linux brethren say Linux is not ready for the desktop when good gui is ignored for simple solving of even the simplest of problems. Sure the cli is a magnificent tool and can be almost used to do open heart surgery if necessary and probably is, but simple and visually understandable tools are great for disposing of simple problems that only require simple measures. This seemingly increasing cli thing is one of the reasons I find myself participating less in discussions here at MUB. If you think I am imaginaging things then just take a few moments and do a bit of a lookover most of the postings by regular members and you will be very surprised. They are all great and valuable work and that is for sure. More and more of my gui type scenario suggestions seem to be brushed aside and/or totally ignored. My suggested solutions may not be the answer and probably are often not, and that I can handle any time, but I notice that the majority of the newbies seem to think that the cli answers are in the main are the only ones worth responding to. Although many do acknowledge the gui suggestion as having worked or didn't and it is this few who encourage my continued participation. Please no one take this as a rant because it isn't, I just hope that some thinking about the subject takes place in time that is all. Cheers. John. John.... many of us don't have mandriva installed so accurately describing the GUI process is not possible but even when it is it takes many more steps and is best accompanied by lots of screenshots etc. For me if I post a CLI answer its because it returns definitive answers not a noobie describing what they see and going in circles... because perhaps they press the wrong button or tab etc. and they can copy/paste exactly the output....and then language differences etc... not to mention differences across different versions of mandriva. for instance lspci -v -v or cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/geometry cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings this gives far more info than MCC... and so you can spot many more potential problems... remember in many cases we are blind troubleshooting ... and saying look through MCC or harddrake and see if you see anything suspicious is ??? wheras cat /proc/ide/ide0/hda/settings gives all the info..... I dunno, i find it much easier to answer a question when you know the answers to the questions you ask are definitive etc. Just an example.... a friend migrated a whole organisation to linux and the application install instruction manuals on the servers were condensed from 100+ page reports of screen shots to 2-3 pages from installing linux from scratch, adding patches etc.etc. because it was simply type THIS.... (and stick in accompanying text file) and you get exactly what you were installing from scratch.. be it a mail server or whatever For instance setting up NFS .... you can echo a file to say /etc/exports then urpmi portmap nfs-common and nfs-kernel-server (these are apt names but just to explain) then exportfs -ra ALL in 3 lines.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 My two cents (and sorry for getting off-topic, too): John, your comment was a good one and I will keep it in mind. :) Yes, we are using the cli, because it is sometimes faster. It's also easier to use once you know the cli but it possibly scares newcomers. But I guess it is mainly just a bad habit that we tend to solve everything with the cli and forget about the "newbieness" of some users. Quite often, I find myself writing something about cli commands and find out later that the same thing is availabe in the MCC and perhaps easier to do with it by those who are new. Then I change my posts accordingly. ;) But sometimes, I voluntarily tell them to use the cli because I want to reduce the "fear-factor" the cli posesses for many people and I want them to learn some basic stuff so they know that there is always a way to repair a system if all GUI tools fail (e.g. if X is broken). I tell them "don't be afraid, it will be simple" and guide them as best as I can and quite often explain commands in detail, so they understand what they will do if they type e.g. "chmod +r +x /bla/blablabla". A lot of the fear of the cli is only there because users don't know what certain commands do (and possibly also due to one-dimensional thinking). I want our users to feel confident one day, that they say oto themselves "I know how to solve this prob myself and I can help others with this specific problem, too". Sure it will not always work and if I see that they run into problems with the cli, I think of a possible solution through the GUI tools. But some things sadly cannot be done through the GUI tools yet. So, sometimes, people will have to learn about the cli in order to fix their prob, if they like it or not. :sad: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelc Posted September 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 I'm not a total n00b. ;) Chronologically, I am quite experienced (2 years off and on.) But, as far as technical awesomeness, I am not so high. Hm......this is wierd. Apparently, I partitioned it so that / was the five gigs, but /home is 30! I guess thats okay, then? (Correct me if I'm wrong) It limits space for RPM installation and stuff like that, but the only thing I was worried about were my games (being about 1 gig each) taking up all of my five gigs. What do you think I should do? Leave it? ' Oh, but fdisk -i does: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 764 6136798+ 83 Linux /dev/hda2 765 4865 32941282+ 5 Extended /dev/hda5 765 904 1124518+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda6 905 4865 31816701 83 Linux Disk /dev/sda: 1031 MB, 1031798784 bytes 16 heads, 32 sectors/track, 3936 cylinders Units = cylinders of 512 * 512 = 262144 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 3936 1007600 e W95 FAT16 (LBA) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 20, 2006 Report Share Posted September 20, 2006 I recommend leaving / at 5G but reducing /home so that you may get a 20G /usr partition. This will improve installation space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.