Problems successfully creating partition

[Spicy Mollusc]

All of my partitions are NTFS. Fortunately, I had left some 60 GB unpartitioned space on one of the harddrives. I created a new 5 GB partition (large enough to install an OS, I figured) of Linux type using ctfdisk. I made it bootable, selected "write" and it said something along the lines of "partition table created, but re-read (or re-write, I can't remember) failed". I rebooted the computer and it allowed me to write it without issue.

However, when I tried to mount the partition using 'Pmount Mount/Unmount Drives', it gave me this message:

"FAILURE! In the case of removable media, the most
common reason is the media is not currently inserted.
Or, you forgot to unmount the previously inserted media.
If so, please remedy."

The harddrive is definitely connected correctly because I can mount the other partition on the disk without a problem. I did Mount the drive before partitioning it, but I wouldn't have been able to access the freespace without doing so. What should I do?

[raffy]

I thought that the drive has to be un-mounted to be partitioned?

[Spicy Mollusc]

Ah, um, yeah, I did this all while the drive was mounted. Although, it was technically free space rather than allocated to a partition, and I don't know if that can be mounted.

Anyhow, do you know how I would remedy this? Would I just do the whole thing again, but with the other partition on the disk unmounted?

[muggins]

if you run fdisk on your hard drive, say fdisk /dev/hda, (if it's hda), what does option 'p' show? also what is the partition formatted as?

[raffy]

You're right about testing the mount, but perhaps there is no filesystem yet. Try to format it with "mke2fs /dev/hda2" using the correct partition number.

If this does not work, then redo the process. Make sure no partitions are mounted at live CD boot-up (use the options indicated to keep Puppy files in RAM). Then redo the cfdisk work. You can then format it with "mke2fs /dev/hda2" using the correct partition number.

If successful, Puppy will allow saving in that new partition at first shutdown.

EDIT: While a newly created partition will show "Linux", it has to be formatted to be useful.

[Spicy Mollusc]

Thanks for your help so far. The partition is formatted as Linux (83).
Option p shows this (the one I'm interested in is hda5)

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 16708 134206978+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 23697 24321 5020312+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 * 23697 24321 5020281 83 Linux

I'm sure that none of them were mounted at startup, except for a USB device I'm using to store my information.
Despite this minor hiccup, I have to say I'm very pleased with Linux. This is my first time using it, and I had heard it was hard to use, but practically everything seems really quite simple.

[muggins]

spicy mollusc,

you haven't said if you've formatted the partition? when you use cfdisk, of fdisk, to create the partition, this allocates that particiular drive/partiton to linux in the partition table, but then, as raffy indicated, you have to format it with:

mke2fs /dev/hda5 , to create an ext2 file system.

aslo do you need a swap partition? if you're ram is less than 256Mbytes you might.

[BarryK]

GParted is by far the easiest way to do this, rather than use cfdisk and mke2fs.

[muggins]

barry,

at the risk of being banished to the antipodes, i have to dissent. when i first tried gparted, in pup201, i really liked the look, & apparent functionality. But it got stuck mid-process somewhere, and to do what i wanted i had to reboot & use fdisk.

i've had exactly the same experience using qtparted with dsl derivative, insert.

[muggins]

looks like gparted is exonerated! fitzhugh resized his hard-disk without any drama:

http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic.php?t=9044

perhaps my problem was the dreaded "operator error".