Arch Linux

nocain

Member

From: nowheresvill california

Registered: 2003-05-31

Posts: 62

mounting file system clarification

Ok ran into this problem when installing Arch in a dual boot setup on my machine at work yesterday.

Ok now I already have 1 partition that is NTFS that WinbloatXP is on,
On the cd install I made 3 partitions, one for swap, /, and /home
So now I have 4 partitions including my NTFS partition that show up in cfdisk, so I write that then go to mount the file system using the menu,

However when I go in there it only showed 3 partitions, now granted I havn't set up a dual boot system where windows and linux share the same drive in oh 5 years or so, but I found that confusing, does it only show the partitions that don't have info on them yet? Further more I couldn't figure it out as everything is refrenced using the odd file system( at least odd to me ) and I don't understand how to read it or if the numbering sytem starts at 1 or 0 ie /dev/disks/disk0/part1 (or whatever it is) means the first partition or the second partition.

So not wanting to blow out my Windows partition and loose the last few months of work on that machine I just droped back to the command line and mounted it there, then went back into the setup program to finnish up.

Now is what I want to know and recommend is:
Does it only show the partitions that don't have info on them yet?
and I would recommend some consistancy in the menus, ie. I see 4 partitions in cfdisk, however once I move into the next step I only see 3 partitions. I think that all partitions should be shown in the mount file system menu to avoid this problem. Other wise you see 4 partions in cfdisk then 3 in the mount screen, and go WTF? did a partition vanish or what?

Granted this could just be me but well I would like that clarified and throw out my thoughts on this, as maybe I'm not the only one that has run into this issue befor. Also I'm big on consistancy so there 

jlowell

Member

Registered: 2003-08-10

Posts: 270

Re: mounting file system clarification

nocain,

There may be a good reason that you're not seeing all of your partitions in the menu.  As I get things you want four partitions, one, NTFS, for Windows XP, another for swap, one for / and one for /home. After you create swap, / and /home, the install CD menu shows only three partitions, not four.

OK, a couple of thoughts. The installation program may realize that the only partitions needing formatting are the new ones you created so it only shows those. Because I can't see what's going on where you are, I can't be absolutely certain about this and we certainly don't want to toast good old XP, so I'm going to ask you to post what cfdisk shows you after it opens. Then I want you to describe exactly what you see when you become confused by the menu. I don't think the matter of having something on a partition to have it detected has anything to do with this matter. Its more likely a question of what's formatted and what's not. But we need to be sure.

This ought to be easy to figure out so hang in there.

jlowell