Reinstallation after upgrade: formatting partitions(Solved)

[sketchman]

I had Puppy running smoothly about a week ago.
I added an extra HD and some other things to my computer.
I then wiped both HDs of all data, including the MBRs, and repartitioned a swap and primary.
Now, when I boot Puppy, it complains about not having a place to mount the root directory.
I know the computer is fine, because I was able to install and run Red Hat 7 after the upgrades.
But, I would rather have Puppy than Red Hat.
I am willing to devote both HDs to Puppy.
Is there anything I can do to fix this.
My specs, as best I know, are as follows. The reason I'm not sure is because I got the PC for free when my school upgraded, and it came with absolutely no software or docs.

80mb RAM (64mb and 16mb sticks)
2 HDs (1st, a Maxtor, is not over 10gig, 2nd, a Seagate, is 20gig)
1 Floppy
1 DVD-ROM
1 sound card (don't know the manufacturer or model but it won't work with Puppy)
Pentium II 350mhz

Would it help to just burn a new Puppy CD? I'd try anything at this point, including wiping the HDs again. I don't care what I have to do. As long as it gets Puppy back on my PC, I'll try it.

Thanks to anybody who can help me.

[rarsa]

What file systems are you using for your partitions? and how are they organized (In both HDDs)

[sketchman]

I have the swap and primary parts on the first HD (Maxtor 10gig).
Swap is first, then primary. I assume the Primary is ext2 format, because I used Fdisk from Red Hat 7 to make my partitions.
The 2nd HD is completely DOS partitioned, but I will reformat it as soon as I get Puppy running on the first HD.

[rarsa]

It seems that my hunch was correct

fdisk does NOT format filesystems. It just creates the partition where to put the filesystem. Marking the partition as type 83 does not format it.

To format a partition you can use the mkfs utilities
mkfs.type device

Code: Select all

#To format the second partition on the first drive as ext3
mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda2

#To format the first partition on the second drive as ext3

mkfs.ext3  /dev/hdb1

To format the swap partition you use

mkswap device

[sketchman]

Thanks.
I'll try that.

[sketchman]

That didn't work. I still get the same message. After which Puppy tells me that it is pausing for 30 secs so I can see this bad situation, and that Puppy will be crippled with only a command line.
I'm going to try it again, and I'll report back when I have.

Thanks for your time.

[sketchman]

Well, I tried it again, and Puppy booted perfectly.
But, there's another problem. It insists on puting the pup001 file on the 2nd HD(20gig).
This is how my drives get named.
1 floppy fd0
2 dvd-rom hda
3 10gig hd hdc
4 20gig hd hdd
This is not a problem until I try to use the install to hard drive option in the setup menu. For some reason, no error messages are given, and the install goes perfectly. Or, that's what it tells me.
Then when I reboot, nothing happens. I stare at a blank screen, until it says that I have no operating system, or bad partition table.
So, I used the CD to boot to Puppy, and it works fine. Then, I looked at the contents of hdd and hdc. The pup001 file is still on hdd and there is nothing on hdc.
I'm going to try to manually install Puppy, but I honestly don't know what I'm doing here, so it may or may not work.

[rarsa]

Many people have reported that installing using the "Install to HDD" does not work for them.

One of the problems with that script is that it does not consider all the different setups required by different users. I usually recommend doing it manually. There are many tutorials for this. Search the wiki under HardDiskInstall.

Here are the detailed instructions I created for someone else. I am sure you can addapt them to your particular circumnstances:

http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?p=50643#50643

[sketchman]

I'm trying it now.

[PodgeAbrillion]

Hey. I'm a fairly new user, but if worst comes to worst, you could always try removing one hard drive, installing puppy, then adding the second hard disk and letting puppy detect it on startup.

I think thant would work...

[sketchman]

I thought of that, but then I guess I wouldn't let myself believe it would help. It was such a simple solution that I thought it wouldn't work.
But, now that you mentioned it, I'll try it.

[sketchman]

Rarsa,
Everything went OK until I rebooted. All kinds of errors showed up about not being able to mount something(I couldn't read it. It went too fast.).
Then, it showed me a login screen, except that "password:" was all I saw. No input for the name.
I'm going to try what PodgeAbrillion said. I think that will solve things, because Puppy installed no problem, before I added the new HD.
Thanks for the help, though. I learned a little about Linux if nothing else, and that's always good.

[sketchman]

Yay. Puppy is back.
I unhooked the IDE cable from hdd, and everything worked perfectly.
Then, I hooked it back, and everything still works.
I also had to reformat hdc2, from ext3 to ext2, because when Puppy booted, it complained that it couldn't find an ext2 filesystem.
Hdd is ext3, but it doesn't complain about it. Kinda weird, but as long as it works, right?

Thanks guys.
To think, all this time, all I had to do was unhook an HD.

Sorry about that, Rarsa. I should have tried that when I thought of it the first time.