In etc/fstab is a formatted hdd in ntfs but empty I like to remove it with kwrite is this possible ?
Because a long ago I did it once with PIco but now it says pico command not found
After removing it from Fstab I like to delete it too from boat options

Are both thinks possible without disrupting suse 10.3 ?



all the best

Removing the line from /etc/fstab will result in it not being mounted when you bootup. It doesn't matter which Linux text editor you use (don't use a word processor however). If you were to remove the partition, then the devices nodes of the other partitions may change and you would need to modify both /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the changes.

If you don't need this partition, you could use the partitioner program in YaST2. You could delete the partition and extend the one before it, or reformat it with a Linux filesystem and use it for one of the Linux partitions. /home & /usr tend to be large. It this partition is big and /home doesn't have it's own partition, you could A) mount it under a temporary name such as /home_new. B) move the contents of /home to /home_new. C) Unmount the device and remount it as /home.

Having /home on a separate partition has the advantage of being able to reinstall your distro, or another one but not format the /home partition. Then you will be keeping all of your documents and personal files.

I would use an editor that will word wrap off so the lines that are longer than is displayed in the window don't drop and start a new line. Many like nedit, kedit, nano perform this standard or require a change in the options before editing.

Brian

Both thank you for you,re reply but it is not a partition but a total empty drive now formated in NTFS
when I try to reformat this drive using Yast2 it come up with a lot of warning I remember when I install suse she also mount it
so in start up options I have 2 Windows XP 1 and Windows XP 2 but start up windows
In boat loader are 2 lines about windows XP
What will happen in the worst case that I have to reinstall suse

So some more advice please

All the best

If you are in kde, you can use "kdesu kate /etc/fstab" to edit the file.

You can also use vim or emacs to edit it. There probably will be a vim or vi or vim-minimal available in any boot disk or rescue mode.

If the entire drive is formatted with the ntfs filesystem, then this disk will contain 1 partition.

Another option is adding the "noauto" option in the /etc/fstab entry for the partition. An entry with "noauto" in it will not be mounted when you bootup but you can manually mount it later.

There are man pages for both "mount" and "fstab". For mounting ntfs filesystems, the ntfs kernel option needs to be loaded. It may be already.
An alternative is to use ntfs-3g instead. This will give you read/write access using a "fuse" user land (vs kernel) driver. For this you need the "ntfs-3g" and "fuse" packages installed. Then the "fuse" kernel module needs to be loaded:
Then use the filesystem type "ntfs-3g" in /etc/fstab or as the filetype "-t ntfs-3g" in a mount command.

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I was thinking that maybe what you are trying to do is remove an extra "windows 2" entry from the boot menu. For that you need to simply edit out the section from /boot/grub/menu.lst.