mounting ext3

[gs3user007]

I posted earlier with my troubles getting a recently formatted fat32 working, but i was having issues with samba timing the connection out when transferring big files to the drive. On the advice of someone in the IRC help channel for Kubuntu, I formatted the drive again, this time to ext3.

After the format (I used qtparted), I deleted the entry in fstab, rebooted, set a new mount point in System Settings. At this point I can read the drive (i think so anyway, it's empty so i can't be sure), but I can't write to it.

I've tried a few things...

qtparted confirms that the drive is formatted ext3.

If I change the type from "auto" to "ext3" in System Settings, it enables/disables like it should, but attempting to create a folder in the drive still fails.

Here's the line in fstab referring to the drive:
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdq1 ext3 users,atime,auto,rw,nodev,exec,nosuid 0 0

I can paste the entire file if someone needs it, but I can verify for you that no two entries share mount points or anything like that.

[dibl]

Re: mounting ext3

This wouldn't be a USB drive, would it? Your mount line looks fine, except I'd change the final zero to a "2", but that's non-critical.

[gs3user007]

Re: mounting ext3

Nope, 120GB internal hard drive...

I changed the trailing 0 to a 2. Didn't fix anything. Attempting to create a folder still fails.

[dibl]

Re: mounting ext3

Can you open a Konsole window and run

blkid

and post the output? Also the output of

fdisk -lu

would be interesting. I've got to hit the road for awhile now -- possibly someone else can lend a hand. If not, I'll have another look later.

[gs3user007]

Re: mounting ext3

blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="C787AB9787AA0DE" LABEL="PRESARIO" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="268CEF6B8CEF33C9" LABEL="DRV2_VOL1" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sdc1: UUID="1C6374B4741B040" LABEL="WD_250" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda2: UUID="0f12a8c6-74bc-4e4d-a82b-1cbadc03c4f8" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda5: TYPE="swap" UUID="01095f9a-13ef-4b84-a0d9-79ec1dbf1df1"


fdisk -lu doens't show anything.

Looking at the output from blkid, the second entry relates to the drive i'm having issues with. How do I fix this?

[dibl]

Re: mounting ext3

OK, I think fdisk frequires a "sudo" in front of it -- my bad.

Wait a minute -- I thought you said this was a ext3 filesystem drive? blkid says it is NTFS. I wonder if you formatted the wrong partition or something?

Since Debian is going the UUID route (due mainly to USB drives), I've simply gone along and started using the "mount by UUID" method for my drives. So here's a typical ext partition mount line from my etc/fstab file:

UUID=0274e598-4def-4a72-9d58-280387d416b8 /media/sdd2 ext3 nouser,defaults,noatime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 2

You might want to simply copy that line into your /etc/fstab file, in place of the one for /dev/sdb1, and change the mount point to your /media/sdq1. But you better make sure it is ext3 formatted if you want this line to mount it.

[gs3user007]

Re: mounting ext3

I don't know if it's a bug with qtparted, or if something just isn't updating correctly...

I'm really rather thoroughly confused. qtparted saw the partition as ext3. blkid insists it's still ntfs. Alright. Fine. I pulled open qtparted again, and formated the ext3 back to fat32 (i'm not really very fond of the way linux handles ntfs drives, so i decided to switch one of them to something that's supported a bit better).

Right, so I'm totally unsure as to whether the partition is fat32 (as qtparted says it is), or ntfs (as blkid says).

Is there some way to find out for sure?

[Fintan]

Re: mounting ext3

I would not use qtparted. It is quirky at best and I don't know why kubuntu instists on using it.
Install gparted from adept/synaptic or

 sudo apt-get install gaprted

This will give a precise idea.
To format you will have to unmount/deactivate (in system settings)
A good idea is to get the gparted live cd:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

It is handy to have anyway and there is a lot of partitioning info on that page as well.

Once you have done that follow dibles advice
Hope this helps, enjoy

[kubicle]

Re: mounting ext3

I'm really rather thoroughly confused. qtparted saw the partition as ext3. blkid insists it's still ntfs.

Did you run blkid with sudo (as root)?

Although blkid can be run as a user, it'll probably just report the contents of the cache file /etc/blkid.tab, which may be outdated.

[gs3user007]

Re: mounting ext3

sudo fdisk -lu yields:

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15505 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0718f991

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 234435599 117217768+ b W95 FAT32


sudo blkid yields:

/dev/sdb1: LABEL="DRV2" UUID="8464895e-e6c1-4a18-a2dc-b1fcc9141e05" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"


the appropriate line in fstab:
UUID=C897-D15E /media/sdq1 ext3 nouser,defaults,noatime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 2


As to using gparted, i've tried it... for some reason it runs extremely slow on my computer. It takes about 20 minutes for it to detect all the drives and their partitions.

As of now, Dolphin still cannot create a folder in /media/sdq1

Help?

[raijinsetsu]

Re: mounting ext3

Most likely, it's a permissions deal.
Using the CLI, cd over to the drive and type ls -al and post the output.
Most likely, only root has permissions.

[eggbanjo]

Re: mounting ext3

Most likely, it's a permissions deal.

Check the root of the disk and make sure you can view AND modify contents, also it does it no harm to change fstab from ext3 to auto - see if it picks up the right format that way!

[gs3user007]

Re: mounting ext3

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2008-01-16 13:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 4096 2008-01-16 01:54 ..
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 2008-01-16 13:40 lost+found

[gs3user007]

Re: mounting ext3

Okay, so I was doing some research on permissions, and i did a chmod on /media/sdq1 to 777. My understanding is that that will grant full read/write privileges to whomever wants them. I'm copying over a dvd image right now (7ish GB), so if you don't here back from me, it means it's working great.

Thanks for the help folks, I really appreciate it!