cannot mount certain partitions: /dev/ entries do not exist

bulliver · 2004-08-17 09:04:51

Hello all. Strange problem here. First I will describe my disk layout. I triple boot Gentoo, Arch, and FreeBSD. My partitions look like this:
/dev/hda = MAXTOR 6L040J2, ATA DISK drive 40GB
hda1 = shared '/boot' partition
hda2 = gentoo '/' partition
hda3 = gentoo '/usr/' partition
hda4 = gentoo '/home' partition
/dev/hdb = SAMSUNG SP0802N, ATA DISK drive 80GB
hdb1 = shared music partition mounted as /home/music on both Gentoo and Arch
hdb2 = shared swap partition
hdb3 = FreeBSD partition
hdb4 = logical Partition
hdb5 = archlinux '/' partition
hdb6 = shared video partition mounted as /home/music/video on both Gentoo and Arch

Now both gentoo and arch use devfs. From gentoo I can see all partitions in the /dev directory and mount accordingly, however, from Arch I cannot mount my gentoo partitions on /dev/hda, and in fact they do not even exist in the /dev directory. Only /dev/hda1 is visible (the shared boot partition which holds all my kernels regardless of distro).

Running fdisk -l /dev/hda from arch gives me this puzzling output:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40027029504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device     Boot      Start      End      Blocks       Id   System
/dev/hda1   *           1        4111    33021576   55  EZ-Drive

So it would seem that fdisk thinks that /dev/hda1 takes up the entire drive, and is labeled as 'EZ-Drive'?!?!?!?!?!? I can assure you that running the same command from gentoo gives me the correct partitions and disklabels ie: id 83 Linux

Does anyone have a clue as to what is going on here? This isn't really a big deal at this point, just an interesting annoyance that I would like to discover the cause of.

TIA

bogomipz · 2004-08-17 09:14:34

Sounds like the partition table is on a format your kernel can't understand.
Ever tried booting Arch with the kernel you use for Gentoo?

bulliver · 2004-08-22 07:35:53

Ever tried booting Arch with the kernel you use for Gentoo?

I can't do that, gentoo uses 2.4.26 and arch uses 2.6.7. and they are both modular kernels.

So you think my 2.6.7 kernel can't understand the partition table on hda? Why would that be?

Edit: 'spose this should have been in hardware/kernel. Sorry, my bad.

bogomipz · 2004-08-22 08:18:05

I don't know how it could be that the kernels interpret the partition table differently, and I'm certainly not sure that this is what's going on. That's why I suggested loading Arch with the Gentoo kernel. I wouldn't expect the system to be its true self, but merely satesfy the curiosity by checking whether it would see the right partitions (a.k.a. trouble-shooting).

It shouldn't be a problem to test this, unless your Arch root uses a file system that is not built into your Gentoo kernel. If for instance hdb5 is reiserfs and your 2.4 kernel has that as a module, you're probably out of luck regarding my suggestion. If this is the case, you could also try the Arch 2.4 kernel. It can coexist with your current kernel because the kernel packages for the two trees have different names.

pacman -S kernel

Hope this helps,
-bogo

bulliver · 2004-09-01 11:25:44

I fixed the problem: Adding "hda=remap" to the kernel command line cleared things up.

Arch Linux

#1 2004-08-17 09:04:51

cannot mount certain partitions: /dev/ entries do not exist

#2 2004-08-17 09:14:34

Re: cannot mount certain partitions: /dev/ entries do not exist

#3 2004-08-22 07:35:53

Re: cannot mount certain partitions: /dev/ entries do not exist

#4 2004-08-22 08:18:05

Re: cannot mount certain partitions: /dev/ entries do not exist

#5 2004-09-01 11:25:44

Re: cannot mount certain partitions: /dev/ entries do not exist

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